


The Life You Break

by PeachyRenjun



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abuse, Adam has chaotic energy, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No Smut, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, because lucifer and chuck both exist in this story, but they do talk about sex a lot, structurally speaking raphael is the protagonist
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:28:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 43,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29236836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeachyRenjun/pseuds/PeachyRenjun
Summary: Adam is a servant on his father's estate who wants to be anyone else but a bastard half-noble, and Michael is a prince with a martyrdom complex. They make a surprisingly good team.Featuring Chuck being a bad king and a worse dad, Lucifer being Chuck's favorite in all the worst ways, and Raphael just trying her best to survive. Plus Sabriel and Saileen going from a dysfunctional poly-relationship to a happy, wholesome one.
Relationships: Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, Gabriel/Sam Winchester, Kelly Kline/Lucifer (Supernatural), Michael/Adam Milligan
Comments: 7
Kudos: 11





	1. Adam

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so  
> 1) Yes I know in season 13 Gabriel and Rowena had a thing, but given that this is an au fic I think it's safe to ignore that and position them in this universe for plot convenience  
> 2) New chapters approximately every week, might be off by a few days or change schedule if school gets too busy. This first chapter will probably be the longest individual chapter, and it can be read as a standalone story.  
> 3) If you don't like Raphael (specifically, female-but-not-particularly-attached-to-the-idea-of-gender Raphael) this may not be your cup of tea beyond the first chapter. If you're ambivalent, I hope that I can make you fall in love with Raphael.
> 
> Hope you all enjoy reading!

It’s no secret amongst the servants of the Winchester estate that Adam Milligan has a crush on Prince Michael. Adam rarely gossips, unlike the majority of the house servants, and he pays even less attention to the Winchesters and their guests. That changes, every few months, when Prince Michael visits.

Prince Michael is a handsome alpha, and his features are only more obvious when he stands next to Prince Gabriel, his younger brother and Sam Winchester’s first spouse. Where Gabriel is short, pale, with auburn hair and amber eyes; Michael is tall, with brown skin and black hair that never seems to fall out of its perfect styling. He has an undeniable royal grace to his movements, despite being a military man. All of the servants are a little infatuated with the alpha prince, but Adam likes him for an entirely different reason.

“Dean, do you understand how _reckless_ you’re being? You took your three year-old daughter hunting in the woods with you, and you don’t see anything wrong with that?”

Adam chuckles to himself, keeping his head down so that neither noble will see his smile at Michael’s words. The two are still on horseback, circling the area near the stables. They’d returned from their ride only a few moments before, and if Michael’s words are anything to go by, the ride had not been free of Michael and Dean’s always-present arguments.

“Claire’s an alpha,” Dean insists, leading his horse toward the stable. “She needs to learn how to hunt eventually.”

“When she’s _ten,_ Dean, not when she’s three!”

“As if your father didn’t have you hunting when you were five.”

Michael huffs, not responding. “My point, Dean, is that Castiel is going to be upset with you when he hears. Are you prepared for that?”

“Cas can’t stay mad at me, you know that.”

“I do know. It’s worrying.” Michael leads his horse into the stable behind Dean, and Adam follows. Adam had managed to weasel his way into being Michael’s personal servant for the day, having exchanged duties with Kevin. Kevin, a beta, had merely rolled his eyes when Adam had asked. “He used to be much less submissive before he met you, you know that? His sister tried to introduce him to me when we were teenagers and he refused to even be in a room with me.”

“Yeah? How’d Anna take that one?” Dean sounds proud, now. It’s the kind of alpha pride that the Winchesters so often exhibit, the _look at me, I’m an alpha and I can fuck whoever I want_ kind of pride. Adam hates it.

“Not well,” Michael says. “Although it wasn’t as if it would’ve worked even if Castiel _were_ attracted to me.”

“Yeah, because he would’ve met me and left you before you could seal the deal!”

Michael rolls his eyes. Michael dismounts, and one of the stablehands takes the reins of the horse from him. Dean, a few feet away, does the same. “Go back to your rooms, Dean, and if you haven’t made it up to Castiel by tomorrow I _will_ tell Gabriel, and you know he’ll tell your brother.”

Dean lays a hand against his chest, an expression of exaggerated hurt crossing his features. “Really know how to hurt a man, don’t you, Michael?”

“Just go, Dean.” An exasperated, polite smile graces Michael’s lips. He pats Dean on the shoulder, once, and then Dean is off.

With Dean gone, Michael turns to Adam. “You’re my shadow for the day?”

Adam nods.

“Usually they send a beta or an alpha. Am I scenting you incorrectly?”

“No, I’m an omega.”

Michael nods to himself. “And what’s your name, omega?”

“Adam.”

Michael looks at him for a moment, his eyes casting over Adam’s form from head to toe. Adam wears neatly-kept servants clothes, in plain grays that pale in beauty next to the blacks and purples and reds of Michael and the Winchesters. His clothes are nicer than those of many servants, both compared to the other servants of the Winchester estate and the servants of other nobles that have passed through, but Adam chooses to believe that it is because of his own care in keeping them clean rather than the Winchesters ever doing him any favors.

“You seemed amused with Dean and I’s conversation.”

Adam bites his lip. If he were more proper than he is, he would deny it and claim that something else had caught his attention. Servants, after all, are not supposed to listen in on the private business of nobles. Adam is more daring than he is proper, though, and instead he hopes that he might get a laugh out of the prince. “My young lord needs a comeuppance, every once in a while.”

Michael doesn’t laugh, but he does quirk his lips into something resembling a smile. He begins to walk out of the stable, gesturing for Adam to follow. “You were raised on the Winchester estate, I take it.”

“Yes, your highness. Born and bred.” Literally.

“Odd. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before.”

Adam does his best to respond politely. “Nobles rarely notice individual servants.”

“I would’ve noticed you, though.” Michael stops in his tracks, his eyes firmly settled on Adam’s face. “Omegas are more noticeable than betas or alphas. Especially one such as you.”

Adam feels a heat come to his cheeks, and he knows he’s blushing. His lungs feel like they’re floating, and he has to blink a few times to bring himself back to solid ground. Adam may be infatuated with the prince, but actually being involved with him is far too dangerous of a game to play. When omega servants play with alpha nobles, it’s always the omega who suffers the consequences. Adam knows that all too well. “I’m not that easy, your highness.”

Michael blinks at him. “I never said you were.”

“You’re flirting.”

Michael stares at him, as if caught off guard. “I suppose I was. My apologies.”

“Your…”

Michael sets off toward the main house, and Adam is left to trail behind him. Adam is confused by the encounter, to say the least, but propriety says that Adam does not speak unless Michael speaks first. Michael doesn’t speak directly to him again for the remainder of the afternoon, and Adam is left to watch Michael spend time with the Winchesters, which really means spending time with Gabriel.

“I hate to spring this on you, especially since you’re only here to visit me,” Gabriel says, as he leans back in his chair across from Michael, “but I’m afraid I have to leave for a few days. I’ve received word from someone I’ve been looking for for a long time.”

“Who?”

Gabriel shrugs, clearly trying to pass it off as nothing. “Someone on Mother Rowena’s side of the family. Nothing for you to worry about, brother.”

Michael’s brow furrows. “Mother Rowena is my family too, Gabriel. If this has something to do with her, it has to do with me.”

“She’s not your family in the way she is mine, Michael, and you know that.” Gabriel takes the last swig of his whisky and sets the empty glass down on the table. Adam, knowing Gabriel’s tolerance, is quick to refill it.

“Still. If you’re going to be traveling, I could come with you, offer my assistance. Whatever it is you need.”

“I don’t need your protection.”

Michael sighs and folds his hands in his lap. Adam had poured a glass for him when they’d first come in the room, but Michael has barely touched his glass. “Does Sam know?”

“Of course.”

“And he’s willing to let you just…run about, like this?”

Gabriel rolls his eyes. “He’s my alpha, not my father.”

“Gabriel.”

“He’s more preoccupied with Eileen, anyway.” Gabriel takes another long sip of his glass. “I don’t want to bother him.”

“He’s your husband.”

“And?”

“He should be there for you.”

Adam bites his lip, willing himself not to spin Michael’s words and imagine a future that cannot be. He is a teenager, though, and teenagers imagine. He sees Michael and his clear sense of honor, and he knows that Michael would be a good, responsible husband. He sees himself, wrapped in Michael’s arms, held there in safety. He sees a child, a daughter, with Michael’s hair and Adam’s freckles. It is a foolish imagination, and yet. Adam imagines anyway.

Gabriel sighs. “Like you know how a marriage is supposed to work.”

That seems to strike a nerve in Michael. He tenses in his seat, leaning forward with a look on his face that actually radiates displeasure. Michael had been judging Gabriel for his decisions earlier, sure, but it’s nothing compared to the look that crosses his face at the mention of what is clearly a sore topic. “Gabriel, you know why I haven’t married.”

“Yeah, yeah, complicated situation. Doesn’t mean that you know how to be a good alpha husband.”

“Our father--”

“Our father only had to manage one spouse for most of his life, the entirety of my life. You can’t glean any ‘words of wisdom’ from a father that’s not in the same situation as Sam. My husband--” Gabriel takes a deep breath. “My husband has two spouses to deal with, and he clearly likes one of us more than the other. And I’ve learned to accept that. I don’t want him to pretend to care about me, alright?”

Michael sits on the edge of his seat, his eyes narrowed as he stares at his brother. “Our father managed three spouses. And you may not remember that, but I was old enough to remember.”

“And what a great job he did.”

“Gabriel.” Michael’s hands are clenched into fists, and Adam briefly wonders whether he should prepare to alert the guards if the princes’ disagreement turns into a fight. Luckily, Adam doesn’t have to. Michael takes a few deep breaths, and settles back into his seat, hands unclenching. “When do you leave?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” Michael stands, making his way out of the sitting room, and Adam follows. As Adam leaves, he takes one last look at Gabriel, seeing the sadness and bitterness that sweeps across his features. Adam rarely speaks directly with the omega prince, but he knows that Gabriel doesn’t like conflict. He avoids arguments whenever he can, even acting sweet toward Sam when Adam _knows_ that Gabriel has caught Sam with other lovers--not just Eileen--more times than he can count. Gabriel can be passive aggressive, certainly, but he never picks fights.

Adam follows Michael back to the guest rooms that he’d been given for the weeks that he is visiting. Michael takes a seat at the desk in the corner, picking through the letters that had been sent to him and placed on his desk throughout the day. Adam, knowing his place, stands by the door, trying not to seem as if he is staring at Michael. That, of course, is exactly what he is doing, but it’s not polite. Especially not when Michael catches him staring, as he does every few minutes.

The alpha has tension rolling off him in waves, and Adam’s not sure whether it’s coming from whatever he’s reading or if it’s leftover from the confrontation with Gabriel. Either way, Adam doesn’t like seeing him so tense. Adam also knows, as an omega, that he has the power to do something about that. Playing with alpha nobles never ends well, of course, but that’s only when you let them get you with child. There’s a lot of things Adam could do that wouldn’t run that chance.

“Your highness,” Adam says, hesitantly. Michael pauses in his reading, sparing the barest glance in his direction. It’s enough for Adam to know he has the prince’s attention. “I know I didn’t respond well to your flirting earlier, but.” Adam takes a deep breath. “It’s just that I don’t want to be with child, at least, not now. But there’s other ways that I can please you, if you’d like--”

“Adam.” Michael looks up at him, a hard, conflicted look on his face. “It’s not necessary.”

“I’m not saying it’s necessary, I’m asking if you want it.”

Michael swallows, and then looks back down at his desk. “Perhaps it’s best if someone else accompanies me for the rest of the time I’m here.”

Well that’s a harsh way to be rejected. Adam had thought the prince seemed to reciprocate his attraction, and here he is saying that he doesn’t even want to be in the same room as Adam. Sure, Adam had come on somewhat strong, but that’s always how it’s best to be with nobles, when you’re only a servant. Nobles can court each other, and have these grand romances, but servants are only playthings. Servants can take pleasure in nobles the same way that nobles take pleasure in them, but physical pleasure is as far as it is allowed to go. Affection is dangerous. Affection--and the lack of it reflected back--breaks servant omegas. It’s best to be blunt, to be upfront with what you want, so that your alpha noble can’t hurt you. Adam is barely an adult, and the only alpha he’s ever wanted is Michael, but even he knows that blunt is best. “I’m sorry, your highness, if I was too blunt. We can forget I said anything, if--”

“Adam,” Michael says, “I don’t want to lead you on. That’s all.”

“So you’ll send me away from your presence?”

“You’re…” Michael looks down at his hands, and then back up at Adam. “You’re distracting.”

So he _is_ attracted to Adam. That’s the only thing that could mean, isn’t it? “If I’m so _distracting,_ why don’t you--”

“My position does not allow for indiscretions. _Wanting_ you changes nothing about that.”

Adam nods slowly. The explanation makes no sense to him, but he must be missing something. Gabriel is plenty indiscrete, and he’s an _omega._ Omegas are supposed to be far more uptight than alphas, and yet Michael seems to be competing to be a monk. If he wants to blame his reluctance to jump into bed on his position, Adam is in no place to argue with him. “I see, your highness. You’re certain you wish me to exchange duties with someone else?”

“Yes.”

Adam nods. “If you don’t require anything right now, I’ll go find a beta to attend to you.”

“Please do.”

Adam doesn’t normally consider himself a reckless person. He’s far more careful than either of his half-brothers, although he doubts that’s a reasonable standard to go by. His mother had raised him to be kind and caring and to protect himself and those he loves. It wasn’t the kind of education that leads someone to pine over a prince that obviously cannot want them. Still.

Adam sits at the edge of the Winchester estate at half-past dawn. He will be expected inside in a half hour to help prepare breakfast for the family, but for now, he is allowed to spend his time as he wishes. And somehow, he always finds himself spending his free time here.

Lord Winchester had buried Kate on the edge of the property, in the midst of a small garden, but without a gravestone. He had cared enough for her to bury her properly, and in a place that she loved, but his duty to his _real_ wife and _real_ family had not permitted him to give name to her resting place. Who else is there to remember her but Adam, after all? The other servants had known her, in the same way that they know Adam, but they had never been her family. Kate and Adam were too close to nobility for the servants to see them as fellows, and the Winchesters would never see them as anything but rats who dared to usurp their perfect illusion. Of course Adam is the only one to visit her grave.

“Mom,” he says to the cold morning air, “I’m being foolish. I know I am. But it seems like ‘foolish romantic’ is a family trait.” He takes a shuddering breath. “I know that I need to get over him, and I know I will, but. Sometimes, sometimes I don’t know where the harm in it is. No servant alpha would marry me, I know that. And I know how terrible it is to be a noble’s dirty secret, but. If I were his secret, at least I would be _something_ to someone. And he is a good alpha, I know he wouldn’t be… He wouldn’t be like _him._ He wouldn’t abandon me like _he_ abandoned us.”

Adam lets his head drop to his hands. “I dream about him taking me away from here, of making me someone other than the _bastard._ Of letting me be someone else. And even though I know he would break my heart, sooner or later, when he marries someone closer to his own status, I still _want_ it. Is it so bad to be happy for a little while, even if you know it will make you unhappy later?

“I know you’re not really listening, or I hope you’re not, anyway. You should be somewhere better, somewhere happier, not here listening to me talk about my infatuation with a prince a decade older than me. But...If you are listening, I love you. And I miss you.”

Adam sits in the silence for a few more minutes, and he lets the cold air brush over him as the sun finishes peeking over the horizon. He will have to go back into the house, soon, and he will avoid Michael as much as he can, but he will still see him. Michael is not set to leave for another week yet, and if Adam knows Michael’s care for his brother, Michael won’t leave until Gabriel has returned from his trip. That means another week of Adam having to leave every room Michael walks into, of having to exchange duties with other servants to make sure that he doesn’t fall into Michael’s line of sight. If Michael wants him gone, then Adam will disappear as best he can.

Adam’s always been good at pleasing people like that.

It’s four days later, when Adam is retrieving a breakfast tray from Eileen’s room, that he overhears it.

“Gabriel didn’t send a letter yesterday,” Sam says. He’s sitting on the edge of Eileen’s bed, fully dressed. He’d not spent the night in Eileen’s room, then. Surprising. Adam would’ve thought Sam would take the opportunity of Gabriel being absent to spend as much time with Eileen as possible. “He’s not far enough away for letters to take more than a few hours of travel to reach us.”

Eileen nods. “He did promise he would write to us.”

“Yeah. I don’t know if I should be worried, or--”

“Of course you should be worried,” Eileen says, laying her palm on Sam’s cheek. “He’s our husband.”

Adam busies himself with rearranging the plates on the tray, trying to look like he still has a reason to stay and listen.

Sam takes her hand in his. “Still. I don’t want to get worried over nothing, especially not with Michael here. He’s-- He’d charge in sword-drawn if he thought Gabriel was in trouble.”

“Maybe he should.”

By noon, the whole family and half the servants have been gathered to the front sitting room. Michael is pacing, and the rest of the Winchester family are clearly on-edge. The servants largely look terrified to be there, as Winchester anger is often taken out on the nearest person available. Adam, standing in the corner, just hopes that he won’t be noticed.

“I should look for him,” Michael says, arms crossed over his chest and one hand compulsively combing through his hair. “He’s my little brother, my father would be displeased if he heard that I’d done nothing.”

“I should go too,” Sam says. “As his husband.”

“No,” Michael says, an edge to his voice. Was it not he, four days ago, who insisted that Sam should pay more attention to Gabriel? Yet here he is, saying that Sam shouldn’t go looking for him. “Your wife is pregnant, Sam. You need to stay here with her.” He pauses his pacing. “I’ll return Gabriel to you safely, don’t worry.”

“So what, you’re just going to go it alone?” Dean asks.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I can handle it on my own, and I don’t see the point at putting any of you at risk when your help is unnecessary.”

The Winchesters look like they’re about to argue, and Adam feels a ball of anxiety and guilt swirling inside his chest. He knows, of course, that Michael has a point. The Winchesters are avid hunters of animals, but none of them are military men, not in the way Michael is. They would be more of a hindrance than an aid. But Adam also knows that you should never charge into a fight without someone to tend to the wounded. None of the Winchesters have that kind of experience in healing, but Adam does. It was one of the things his mother had been insistent upon teaching him. Adam is, on some level, a healer. And Michael will need one, even if he doesn’t realize it.

“Your highness,” Adam says, letting his voice raise just high enough for Michael to hear. In the quiet of the sitting room, it sounds deafening. “It would be best if you had a healer with you. In case Gabriel is injured, or if you are hurt. I have the necessary training. You don’t need to take anyone unnecessary, but. I think this might be necessary.”

Michael looks at him for a long moment, and Adam feels frozen, as if he cannot even move to breathe air into his lungs. The worst Michael will do is tell him off, but Adam still feels a sense of anxiety within himself as he waits for Michael’s response.

“You’re willing to put yourself in harm’s way?”

“Yes, your highness.”

Michael looks away. “Fine. Gather anything you’ll need for the journey. We’ll leave before sundown.”

“So, I know last time we talked didn’t end so well, but if we’re going to be traveling together for multiple days, we might as well start talking.”

“Why?”

Adam turns in his saddle, looking at Michael. The prince sits elegantly on his horse, clearly more accustomed to riding than Adam. He doesn’t look Adam’s way, but at least he’s responding. Even if it is in one-word questions. “Because we’re going to get bored eventually, if we don’t. What do we have to lose?”

Michael doesn’t respond. Great.

Adam waits for a few minutes to pass before he ventures his next question. “Can I at least ask you something about what you said the other day?”

“Go ahead.”

Two words! Progress. “You said that your ‘position’ doesn’t allow you to be with me. But we all know that nobles, especially alpha nobles, sleep with omega servants all the time. So why is your position any different?”

Michael is silent for a moment, and Adam almost thinks the prince isn’t going to respond. But eventually, Michael replies. “Nobility and royalty are two different situations. With nobility, inheritance stakes are low enough that it’s fine for most nobles to have illegitimate children. But with royalty, if there’s an alpha bastard of the king and they try to make a claim to the throne...well, it could incite civil war. It’s not worth it. So normal marriage rules are a bit _different,_ for royalty. Alpha royals, unlike alpha nobles, are permitted to marry across class. And we are _obliged_ to marry any omega we impregnate. So you can imagine why I would avoid messing around.”

Adam huffs. “I explicitly said I didn’t want you to impregnate me, remember?”

“And things can get out of hand.”

Adam rolls his eyes. Despite his outward exasperation with Michael, there is a hope growing inside him, gnawing at his thoughts. Michael is allowed to marry outside of the nobility, which means that--if he were willing--he _could_ marry Adam. Adam wouldn’t have to be a dirty little secret, he could be a _real husband._ That’s more hope than anyone’s given Adam in a long time. “I have another question. Not about that.”

“Yes?”

“Why do you and Gabriel look so different? Since you’re brothers and all.”

Michael laughs. “We’re _half_ -brothers. Same alpha father, different omega parent. We all took after our omega parent in appearance, apparently Father’s looks didn't catch.”

“Yeah?”

“Mhm. My sister, Raphael, and I, we’re both dark-skinned like our omega father. And we have his eyes, apparently, but Raphael’s eyes don’t even look like mine, so I’m not sure how we would both have his eyes-- Anyway, Lucifer is blond and blue-eyed like his mother, and Gabriel...Well, his hair isn’t quite as red as his mother’s, but the influence is still there.”

“Your father must see each of them in you, then.”

Michael hums, but it is more muted than he was merely a moment before. Adam fears he’s said the wrong thing. “He certainly does.”

Adam lets that sit, for a few minutes. They will have to speak again, sooner or later, but Adam feels that Michael needs some time to think. Adam can’t help but feel that he’s hit on something more personal than he should’ve, and he’s not sure whether he should move it along and change the topic or whether he should just leave it be. Eventually he decides to change the subject. “So, you’re in the military, right?”

“I’m an honorary general, yes.”

“Honorary?”

“Honorary meaning I wouldn’t have the position if I weren’t royalty. I still fight, and I still have skills in strategy and command, but I wouldn’t be anywhere near this rank for another ten years if I were of a lesser status.”

“I see.” This is probably the best way to get him talking, but Adam has no idea what to ask. “What type of things do you do?”

“I do whatever my father asks of me.”

“Such as?”

“Clearing forests of bandits, doing border patrols, sorting out conflicts between various lords. I doubt you’d find it all that interesting.”

“I mean, if you’re willing to talk about it, I’m willing to listen.”

“Just to pass the time?”

Adam shrugs. “It’s better than the silence.”

Michael considers that for a moment, and then he turns it back on Adam. “Let me ask you a question.”

“Sure.”

“Why did you agree to come looking for my brother? Even after I dismissed you?”

Adam bites his lip. There’s a lot of answers to that question, and some of them were duty and some of them were guilt and some of them were an excuse to be in Michael’s presence once more. Adam settles on an answer that won’t make things any more awkward than they already are. “Because I know I’m the best person to do it. No one else on the estate has the healing expertise I do.”

“Who did you learn it from, then?”

“My mother,” Adam says. “But she died a few years ago, now. When I was seventeen.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Thanks.”

Michael waits a minute before speaking up. “Why do you care about saving Gabriel, though? I can’t imagine you have much attachment to any of your lord’s family.”

Adam smiles bitterly to himself. If only Michael knew. “Gabriel’s actually nicer than most of the family. Eileen’s the nicest, but Gabriel’s a close second. They don’t… Well, let’s just say the Winchesters have something against me, and Gabriel and Eileen don’t. They don’t treat me differently than they treat the other servants, and that’s about as much as I can ask for.”

“What do they have against you?”

Adam contemplates telling him, but he can’t see a situation where telling Michael helps anything. He doesn’t want Michael to feel _bad_ for him, and he doesn’t want Michael to feel like Adam’s trying to claim to be something he’s not. Adam knows half-nobles have a bad reputation for always trying to reach above their status. Adam doesn’t have aspirations like that. He’ll never be noble, and he knows that. “It’s complicated. Personal stuff.”

Michael hums. “So you...you care about saving Gabriel because he doesn’t treat you the way the Winchesters do?”

“I care about him because I care about _people._ If I can help someone, I will.”

“Even the Winchesters?”

Adam laughs bitterly. “Even them, yeah.”

“That’s quite selfless of you.”

Adam shrugs. “It’s what my mom would’ve wanted me to do. That’s all that matters.”

“She must’ve been an amazing woman.”

“She was, yeah.”

They stop for the night at an inn along one of the main roads. Michael doesn’t drink, or at least not heavily, and so they retire to their room once they’ve finished the meager supper the inn serves. They’d only gotten one room-- _security reasons--_ and so by the time they’ve washed up for the night, a question hovers over them.

“You should take the bed,” Michael says, rifling through the small bag he’d brought. “As an alpha, I shouldn’t make you sleep on the floor.”

“And as a servant, it’s my duty.” Adam huffs. “Princes don’t give up their bed for servants.”

Michael frowns at him. “And if I want to give it up for you?”

Adam rolls his eyes. As if a prince would _want_ to give up anything. “Come on, if you make me take the bed, you’ll at least share it with me.”

The bed isn’t the smallest, although it’s far from being the size typically enjoyed by nobility. It could fit both of them, but not with much room to spare. Adam, having finished his washing up, climbs into the sheets and moves to the side, leaving room for Michael to climb in after him.

Michael looks at him skeptically. “That would be inappropriate.”

“Yeah, and half a week ago I offered to give you an orgasm. This is hardly the most inappropriate interaction we’ve had.”

Michael bites his lip, and Adam just laughs at the clear mental anguish that crosses Michael’s features. If Michael is going to be difficult, then Adam will at least have fun tormenting him in return. “Adam, really--”

“Come on,” Adam grins up at him. “Have a little fun in your life.”

Michael sighs, and with a reluctance in his movements, he crosses the room and crawls under the covers next to Adam. Adam turns on his side, watching as Michael does the same, and then they’re chest to chest, only a few inches separating them.

“See? Not that bad.”

Michael closes his eyes, a half-laugh escaping him. His expression settles into something darker, more tense, when he opens his eyes again. “Adam, I know that you think this is all harmless, but I’m pushing you away for a reason.”

“Which is?”

“I don’t want you to be in harm’s way. My family is-- It’s dangerous. Being royalty is always difficult to navigate, and it’s even worse with my particular generation. Anyone I marry will be in danger. And I don’t want to drag you into that.”

“You barely know me.”

“And that’s more than enough reason not to drag you into this, isn’t it?”

Adam furrows his brow. Alpha nobles don’t _care_ about the servant omegas they use. That’s a law of the universe. Michael acting like he cares about Adam? That’s a violation of that principle, as if Adam had thrown an apple into the air and Michael had willed it not to fall to the ground. “You don’t have to _marry_ me, your highness. I never asked for that.”

“What are you asking for, then?”

Adam looks at him, and he sees Michael staring back, and Adam offers him a little, reassuring smile before he leans in and presses his lips to Michael’s.

Michael is hesitant, for a moment, but before Adam can wonder whether he’s made a terrible mistake, Michael is kissing back, one of his hands pressing into Adam’s waist and the other into his hair. Michael is more skilled at this than he would probably admit, and Adam--who has only ever kissed some of the beta servant boys, almost always as a joke--feels amateur in comparison. But it feels _good._ Above any other thought, is the simple recognition that this feels far better than any other kiss Adam has ever had.

Adam pulls back for air, after a minute, and he looks across at Michael, and he sees the way Michael looks at him, and he feels even more warmth spread to his cheeks. “See? Fun.”

Michael laughs, shaking his head. “So this is your endgame? To kiss me and ask for nothing else?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

Michael looks at him, and then reaches up to trail his hand over Adam’s cheek. “You’re so bizarre,” he says, although it is clearly not an insult.

“In what way?”

“Few people, especially servants, would dare to speak to me as you do. Are you really not afraid?”

Adam shrugs. “Doesn’t matter if I’m afraid or not. It’s not like my life can get much worse than it already is. Might as well try to make the best of things.”

“What do you mean?” Michael’s eyes narrow.

Adam bites his lip, considering how much he can tell Michael. He can’t, or at least _won’t,_ tell Michael about his parentage, but he can tell him about other things. If Michael pieces it together from there, then so be it. “My mom’s dead, I never had a real father, and neither the Winchesters nor the other servants particularly like me. So I try to be the person my mother would’ve wanted me to be, and I know I’ll probably fail at that.”

“Why do you think you’ll fail?”

“Because no one ever gives me the chance to succeed.”

Michael looks at him, and there is a depth to his gaze, something that Adam would almost call _understanding_ or _empathy_ if he didn’t know better. He holds Adam in place with his hand, and leans forward to lay a kiss on his forehead. Soft, barely there. He turns to lay on his back, pulling Adam to his side. They are far closer than they _should_ be, closer than Adam had anticipated when he’d proposed they share the bed. But it is Michael that initiated it, and Adam will take whatever he can get from Michael. 

“Goodnight,” Michael says, once he’s extinguished the candle on the bedside table. “Sleep well, you’ll need your energy for the journey tomorrow.”

“Goodnight. You too.”

The next morning, they set back out again. Gabriel’s letters to Sam all bore the stamps of the villages he’d passed through, so they’re able to trace well enough the path he’d taken, at least until the letters had stopped coming. Michael knows the kingdom’s main roads off the top of his head, as if he had an internal map that he was tracing on. Adam, on the other hand, had barely been off the Winchester estate, and has no idea what makes any given forest road different from any other.

“So,” Adam says, once they’ve been riding for half an hour, “are you and Gabriel close?”

“I don’t know if ‘close’ is the right word, but he’s not the worst of my siblings.”

“Who is, then?”

Michael pauses. “I don’t think I can tell you that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Well, we’ve got hours to ride. I think I can handle the explanation.”

Michael shakes his head, chuckling. “Not that kind of complicated. It’s just, well, family secrets. Although I suppose telling you Gabriel’s not the worst really narrows down the field.”

Adam raises an eyebrow. “So we shared a bed last night, but I’m not trustworthy enough for your family secrets?”

“Even Sam and Dean aren’t trustworthy enough. It’s...I don’t want to make any of my siblings look bad. Besides Gabriel, all three of us are alphas, so we all have important roles to play in governing the kingdom. It’s not good to spread rumors about people in important places.”

Adam looks over at him, seeing the small, conflicted smile on Michael’s lips. “Yeah, and who am I going to spread these rumors to? Like I said, nobody talks to me.”

Michael rolls his eyes. “You promise not to tell anyone?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Michael looks at him for a moment longer, and then he looks back at the road ahead, his face stilling into a more calm expression. “Well, let’s just say that my sister has never been one to cause trouble.”

Adam cracks up. The other brother it is then-- Lucifer, right? It’s so very _Michael_ to avoid saying it directly, even after all of his worrying over whether or not he could even say it. “Are you going to tell me what your brother did to deserve the title of ‘worst sibling,’ then, or is that too much of a family secret to tell?”

“He’s done quite a bit, I’ll put it that way.”

“And nothing you can tell me, right?”

Michael shakes his head. “I’m afraid not.”

They ride for another hour or so in a comfortable silence. While the previous day, the silence had felt awkward, stifling, today’s silence feels less tense. While things hadn’t openly changed between them, and Michael was not more affectionate in the morning, their conversation the previous night had taken away the oppressive air that had hung over them since they first met. They know where they stand, or at least, they understand better which lines they’re willing to cross.

“I do worry about Gabriel, though.”

Adam looks over at Michael, who’s still watching the road ahead. “I mean he’s missing, so…”

“Not just right now. You heard my conversation with him, the day before he left. I worry about his relationship with Sam. As much as Gabriel pretends not to care, I can tell that he does.”

“It seems like it, yeah.” Adam lingered in Sam and his spouses’ quarters more often than in the other family members’ spaces. He couldn’t stand to be around the Lord and Lady, for obvious reasons, and Dean and Castiel’s constant drama was exhausting. Gabriel and Eileen were nice enough to Adam, and Sam was willing to ignore his presence, and so Adam found comfort in listening to the three of them and their playful arguments. It was clear to Adam, as it was clear to Gabriel and to everyone else who observed the three for long enough, that Sam was more in love with Eileen than with Gabriel. That did not mean that Sam and Gabriel did not share a bond, but it was hard not to compare them. Gabriel, always full of life, would hide his bitterness behind smiles and laughter until others stopped asking.

“Gabriel doesn’t...He only grew up with one omega parent in the family, and so he didn’t understand what plural marriages are like before he agreed to one. The rest of the family, or at least Lucifer and I, we tried to talk him out of it. We understood why it was a bad idea. But Gabriel was in love, and you can’t talk Gabriel out of anything once he’s decided on it.”

“What happened? That makes you so wary of plural marriages?”

Michael looks over at Adam, just for a second, and Adam can see a deep pain in his eyes. He does not jerk away from it, as he seems to do whenever a sore topic arises; he sinks into the feeling and lets it swallow him. “Like I said, our alpha father once had three omega spouses. By the time Gabriel was born, two of them were dead. Nothing good came of it.”

“How’d they die?”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

Fair enough. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty sure Sam loves Gabriel too. He’s just not always the best at...balancing things, I guess.”

“It’s not him I’m worried about.” Michael sighs. “Do Eileen and Gabriel get along?”

“They do, yeah.”

“That’s good.” Michael pauses, for a moment, and Adam almost thinks that he’ll leave it there. “My family...It wasn’t my alpha father’s fault that the marriages didn’t work. It was competition between his spouses that made everything fall apart.”

Adam bites his lip. That does sound more like Gabriel and Eileen’s situation, although Adam wouldn’t say that their relationship is competitive enough for someone to end up _dead._ “Gabriel and Eileen...There’s some tension there because of Sam, but they’re _friends,_ you know? They love each other, not in a romantic way, but in a way where you care about someone and you want to protect them. Sam actually wasn’t sure if he should tell you that Gabriel was missing, and Eileen was the one who made him tell you.”

Michael is silent for a moment, and when he responds, he sounds different. More assured. “Perhaps I don’t need to worry, then.”

“You should worry less, at least.”

“Perhaps.”

At twilight on the third day, they come to the last village Gabriel sent a letter from. It’s no larger than any of the others they’ve passed through, just a collection of houses, an inn, and acres upon acres of farmland. 

“So,” Adam said, as they entered the village, “what makes this place different? Like, what could’ve caused Gabriel to stop sending letters?”

Michael sighs. “I’m not sure. Perhaps we should talk to the innkeeper, see if they remember Gabriel passing through.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

The innkeeper, as it turns out, does remember Gabriel. “Short, red-haired noble? Yeah, he was here a few days ago, said he was looking for some family.”

“Any idea where he was going?”

“He said there was an estate he was going to, somewhere not far from here. Seemed to think it was within an hour or two of travel.”

Adam turns to look at Michael, already anticipating that the alpha must be trying to find it on his mental map. Michael looks ahead, but as if he is staring past the innkeeper. After a moment, he blinks, turning his gaze back to the innkeeper. “Thank you for your assistance.”

Michael then promptly drags Adam out of the inn. “We’re not even staying for dinner?”

“Not with Gabriel so close, no.” Michael leads them to the post where they tied their horses, and makes quick work of unknotting the reins. “The only estate within half a day’s travel is the old Cunningham estate. It’s been abandoned for a quarter of a century, the family that used to live there all died in a series of accidents. None of the extended family wanted to touch it, they thought it might be cursed. So it’s been under the Crown’s holdings ever since.”

“And you think that’s where Gabriel’s gone?”

“It’s possible,” Michael says, mounting his horse. Adam copies him. “Gabriel’s mother, Rowena, is from this region. If he’s looking for a private place to meet with that side of the family, it would be ideal.”

“Alright. How far is it?”

“Two hours if we’re going at a normal pace, a little over an hour if we hurry.”

Adam nods, and they’re off, Michael leading the way.

By the time the sun has fully set, they’ve reached the estate. It’s an old, brick house, in much the same style as the Winchester estate. There are vines running up the exterior walls, and the lesser facilities of the estate--garden fences, outhouse, quarters for the lesser servants--are all crumbling. It looks every bit the abandoned estate, and with only the moonlight illuminating it, Adam can see why people would think it cursed.

“So. What’s the plan?”

“I’ll go in and look for Gabriel, you hang back.”

The hell? No way Adam’s staying out here in the dark, alone. “What?”

“Do you _want_ to rush into what is possibly a trap?”

“I mean, you’re rushing into it. I’m not letting you go in alone.”

Michael looks at him, and Adam can see the _protective alpha_ look in his eyes, the one that Sam always looked at Eileen with; the one that--in Adam’s most repressed memories--Lord Winchester used to look at Adam with, when Adam would try to climb on top of the garden walls and jump down to feel the wind in his hair. It’s a look that Adam both loves and hates, because it means _care_ at the same time that it means that they don’t see Adam as capable enough to make his own choices and take care of himself.

“Fine,” Michael says, dismounting from his horse. “Bring your medical supplies.” He unzips his bag, and before Adam can say anything, he’s handing Adam a dagger. “And take this. Don’t go after anyone first, but in case you need to defend yourself.”

“Thanks.”

Adam dismounts his own horse, and they tie them to trees a few yards away from the outer gates of the estate. From there, it’s a few minutes of walking to the estate itself, done in silence. Adam’s good at keeping silent, and at sneaking places he’s not meant to be. It’s a skill you acquire when people don’t particularly want you around.

By the time they reach the front door, it’s clear that _someone_ is in the house. There’s no candlelight visible from the windows, but there are voices, there’s footsteps, there’s every indication of human life. Michael approaches the door first, gesturing over his shoulder for Adam to fall in line behind him.

Michael opens the door, charging inside with his sword drawn from its sheath. Adam tries to follow, but he feels his heart hammering in his chest, and from the sounds inside, just out of his vision, he can tell that Michael was not warmly welcomed. Iron against iron, yells--none of them, luckily, sounding like Michael. Adam hears the yelling die down, after a minute.

Panic grips him. Adam worries whether Michael is hurt, whether he’s already wounded beyond repair, whether Adam wasn’t able to save him. He doesn’t know what he’ll say, if he returns to the Winchester estate with only Gabriel, or worse, by himself. But more than that, he wonders what he will become without Michael. Because he’s had Michael at his side for the past few days, protecting him and sharing secrets and making Adam feel like more of a _person_ than anyone has cared to in a long time. If Michael is gone, Adam doesn’t know whether he’ll even be able to make it back home.

Adam shakes the thoughts aside, and he wills himself to walk inside.

There are bodies on the floor. Michael has the only other living person in the room backed against one of the walls, the man’s collar bunched up in Michael’s fist. “Where is he?” Michael asks, his voice barely above a whisper. “Where is the prince?”

“In the basement,” the man replies. “Please, your highness, he’s unhurt, I swear. Spare me, please!”

“Are there any others? In the basement, upstairs, surrounding the estate?”

“No, your highness.”

Michael nods, lightly, and turns his gaze to Adam. There is a fire in his eyes, and Adam can see the red stains in splatters across his shirt. “Go downstairs, find Gabriel, and bring him up.”

Adam nods, and makes his way down the hall, to the archway that clearly leads to a kitchen. Basement entrances are usually in kitchens, or at least the one at the Winchester estate is. Adam finds a cupboard door, and then another, and eventually he finds a door that leads down a flight of stairs. It’s dark, down in the basement, with not even the moonlight to illuminate it. What if the man lied, what if there were other attackers waiting in the dark?

Adam takes one step down the stairs, stilling as the stair creaks beneath him. He stops, listening in the darkness. He doesn’t hear footsteps, nor voices. “Gabriel?” He calls out, hoping desperately that he will get a response. He prepares to run, anyway, just in case.

He hears a muffled moan from the basement, and he knows it’s Gabriel. Adam rushes down the steps, into the darkness, and follows the sound until he’s up against a wall, his foot striking against flesh. A yelp. Adam kneels down, feeling blindly for the gag, for whatever binds Gabriel. He finds the omega prince’s hair, and he feels for the gag, untying the knotted cloth behind Gabriel’s head.

“Adam?” Gabriel asks, once the gag is gone.

“Yeah,” Adam says. “Me and Michael came to get you. Are you tied up? Can you walk?”

“My hands and ankles are tied,” Gabriel replies, “but I’m fine otherwise.”

Adam locates the rope ties, and, deciding that delicacy is for less pressing situations, takes the dagger Michael gave him and severs each set of ties. He takes one of Gabriel’s arms, looping it around his neck, and leads him to the stairs.

When they return to the entrance, the other man is gone, and Michael is standing alone among the wreckage. “Gabriel,” Michael murmurs, upon seeing his brother, relief evident in his voice.

“Michael,” Gabriel says in return, and Adam is left to watch as Michael embraces his younger brother, pulling him to his chest. Gabriel latches on tightly, and Adam swears that he sees Michael flinch away for a second.

“What happened?” Michael asks.

“Deal went wrong,” Gabriel says. “I’ll explain later.”

“Will anyone be after you?”

“Not immediately. Probably not ever.”

“Alright.”

When they pull back from the hug, Adam notices a new red spot on Michael’s shirt, one that hadn’t been there only a moment before. “Michael,” he says, “are you hurt?”

Michael looks confused, and then he follows Adam’s gaze to the bloodstain on his shirt. “It’s just a flesh wound. Nothing we can’t deal with when we get back to the village.”

“You’re sure?” Adam asks. “I have my supplies, I can clean it and stitch it--”

“When we get back,” Michael insists. “You need candlelight, not moonlight.”

“Fine.” Adam just hopes Michael isn’t underestimating the severity.

When they get back to the village, Gabriel having found his horse tucked into the old stable, they book two rooms at the inn for the night. Adam can see the look in Michael’s eyes as they make their way to the rooms, the one that says that omegas should bunk together, but Adam just nods at Gabriel and follows Michael into the alpha’s room.

“You were brave, back there,” Michael says, as Adam sits by the side of the bed, stitching the wound closed. It’s not too serious, but Adam would rather stitch it than risk it. It’s the first time he’s seen Michael shirtless, and he can’t say he doesn’t appreciate the view. Or he would, at least, if Michael weren’t injured.

“And you were reckless.”

“In what way?”

“Charging in, taking on who-knows-how-many men on your own. You wanted to go in _without_ my help, even.”

Michael shuts his eyes. “I’m a military man. It’s what I do.”

“Do reckless things that make you look like a hero, even at the cost of your own life?”

“You were risking your life, too.”

“Only because I had you there with me.”

Michael opens his eyes, peering up at Adam. “Do I make you feel safer?”

“Of course,” Adam says. “You’re the closest thing I’ve got to an alpha of my own.”

It might not be the most delicate way of putting it, but Adam’s a believer in bluntness and honesty, and it’s accurate. Sure, Michael will never marry him, but Adam can no longer deny that he’s attached to the alpha. Emotionally, not just physically attracted. And he knows that’ll come back to bite him, but in this quiet space, when they only have a few days, a few hours, before they have to return to the Winchester estate and the same tiring existence that Adam has always known, he wants to take what he can get. He wants to enjoy this.

Michael looks at him with the softest look Adam has ever seen on him. “Adam, if we were different people than we are, I would make you mine. I would. Seeing you, over these past few days, how you always do what you think is right, even when you put yourself at risk-- I can see why I would fall in love with you. But I can’t let myself do that.”

“I know,” Adam says, and there’s a swell of joy at Michael’s words at the same time that that joy is clamped down upon with ever-restricting pessimism. “I won’t ask you for what you can’t give.”

Michael lays in silence, for a moment, and Adam returns to the stitches. They’re almost finished. “Tonight,” Michael says, “we can pretend, though.”

“Yeah?”

Michael nods. “I’m yours, Adam, if you’re mine.”

“Of course,” Adam says, as he sets the needle and thread aside. “I’m always yours, Michael.”

They return to the Winchester estate three days later. The journey back is mostly spent with Gabriel doing the talking, but Michael and Adam share looks and jokes during the day, and at night they share kisses and the tender intimacy of simply sleeping side-by-side. They do not need to formally break things off, because they both know that Michael leaving the Winchester estate is the end.

Adam stands by the gate, alongside the family and the other house servants, as they bid Michael goodbye. Adam does not wave, just nods and smiles and tries not to let Michael see the way that there are tears brewing beneath his eyelids. He can hide his emotions well enough, during the day, and he will cry to his mother’s grave in the mornings until it goes away. Adam knows how to move on, or at least he knows how to fake it.

The day after Michael leaves, Adam is summoned to Gabriel’s rooms.

“Yes, your highness?” Adam says, as he stands by the doorway.

“Adam, please. No need. You saved my life, we’re well past formalities” Gabriel gestures to the seat across from his desk. “Come on, sit. We need to talk.”

“About what?” Adam sits.

“About you and my brother. Because he’s being an idiot, and we all know it.”

“What do you mean?”

Gabriel sighs. “Did he tell you about the succession issue?”

“The what?”

“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’ then.” Gabriel leans back in his seat. “Usually, there’s a clear heir among the king’s alpha children. Unfortunately, in our generation, there’s two, with equal claims to the throne. Michael is the oldest, but Lucifer is the late Queen’s only son. In the case that there’s multiple, equal claims, it’s decided by whichever has an alpha heir of their own first. Provided neither of them die in the meantime, of course.

“Now, Michael’s a bit of a daddy’s boy. He listens to our father as if the man was God himself. And Father wants Lucifer on the throne. We all know it, Michael included. So instead of fighting for his right to rule, Michael’s content to just let Lucifer take it. Lucifer’s got an omega wife, and she’s pregnant. Who knows whether or not the baby will be an alpha, but if they are-- It’s bad. Father’s not the best king, but Lucifer would be worse. And if Michael doesn’t start trying to create an heir of his own, Lucifer’s going to take the throne, sooner or later.”

“So… You think he should marry me? So that I can try to give him an heir?”

Gabriel nods. “He’s an idiot not to.”

Adam feels an anxiety rising in his chest, a sudden realization of his own mistake. He’d _told_ Michael that he didn’t want to have a child. And sure, Adam had meant in the context of alpha nobles who leave their mate and child behind, but Michael didn’t know that. Michael doesn’t know that Adam _would_ be willing, if it were in the context of a true marriage, especially if it was for the good of the kingdom. Michael doesn’t know any of that, and Adam might’ve just lost his chance with him.

Adam might’ve just doomed the entire kingdom.


	2. Raphael

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'll return to a Michael POV chapter next week, but this week we get our introduction to the messed up family dynamics of Chuck and his kids.
> 
> Also, content warning: There are threats of violence and mentions of past violence.

At seventeen years old, Raphael made a deal she knew she wouldn’t keep. She didn’t like being dishonest, and she rarely made promises she didn’t mean. But sometimes, in a world like hers, you do what you must to survive. You lie.

She’d been in her father’s office, that day, absentmindedly picking through the books on the shelves as Father sat at his desk, reading through reports his advisors had sent him. He hadn’t looked at her, nor she at him. But she did not normally come to his office, and so both of them knew there were unsaid words between them. Raphael felt a hand within her chest, clenching tight around her lungs as she tried to say the words. It was never easy to go against Father. But this was her life at stake, she knew it was, and so she pressed down the urge to run away.

“Father,” she murmured, just loud enough for him to hear, “I know why you’ve sent Michael away again.” It was the third assignment Father had sent Michael on in the past six months. The assignments had started when Michael had turned eighteen, although he’d been in some form of military training from the time he could walk. Their kingdom was not at war, and so Father could not be rid of Michael that way, so he sent him on border patrols, or to rid the mountain passes of bandits, or to negotiate deals with the pirates who plundered the kingdom’s shores. None of it seemed particularly dangerous, but there was always the chance. Father sent Michael away more and more as time went on, and each time Raphael feared she would wake to a day when Michael did not return home at all. “It’s not necessary to do the same for me. If you don’t wish me to marry, I won’t.”

Father peered up at her over his spectacles. “Darling, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Raphael felt an anger rise in her chest, but she pushed it down, biting her lip and slamming the book she held in her hands back into its place on the shelf. She wasn’t sure whether the anger was for herself or for Michael. “Please don’t lie to me, Father. You can lie to my brothers, but you can’t lie to me.”

Father set his pen down and leaned back in his chair. He gestured to the chair across from him. “What do you think I’m lying to you about, Raphael?”

Raphael took a deep breath before she turned and walked to the other chair, taking a seat. She would’ve wished to keep her distance, to stand while he was seated, but there was no such luck. She couldn’t disobey him, not even on something as simple as sitting or standing. She was here to make a deal with him, not to anger him. “You intend Lucifer to be your heir. He’s clearly the favorite, far beyond me or Michael. So you send Michael away, and you hope he dies a martyr so you don’t have to have him assassinated.” She watched the quirk of Father’s lips, and she saw that she was correct. “I’m less of a problem than he is, but…” Raphael looked down at her clenched hands as they rested in her lap. This was the thing that had always terrified her the most, beyond anything that Father had ever done to her or her brothers. Father did not rule by violence, he ruled by the  _ threat _ of violence. By the knowledge that what had been done once could be done again. “You killed your own alpha sister when you took the throne, even though she was younger than you. You would have Lucifer do the same to me.”

Father regarded her with a cold, yet approving eye. “You really are an observant girl, aren’t you?”

Raphael stayed silent.

“So what, you want to promise you’ll stay out of Lucifer’s way?”

“Yes.” The lie. “I won’t attempt to seize the throne for myself.” The truth. “Just let me stay here, and read my books. I don’t intend to be a threat, Father.”

“We are often things we do not intend to be. Does that make those things any less true?”

Raphael could hear the challenge in his voice, and she knew that he would not accept her promise if she did not cry. Alpha men did not cry, at least not in public, but alpha women were permitted a greater show of emotion. Crying made the  _ woman _ more prominent than the  _ alpha, _ more prone to sympathy and mercy. Raphael was an alpha more than she was a woman, but she would do what it took to survive. If Father wanted her to fall at his feet and beg, she would do it. “Father,” she said, letting the mist come to her eyes and willing her hand to shake as she reached out to grasp at his fingers,  _ “Please.” _

Father looked at her, and his gaze was still so cold. His gaze was  _ always _ cold. For as long as Raphael could remember, Father had looked on her with a mix of anger and regret. She was not his  _ darling, _ for as much as he called her the word, and any kind word he had ever spoken to her had been coincidence or performance. Father did not love Raphael, the same way he did not love Michael or Gabriel. Even Lucifer, the favorite, was only looked upon with pride because he reflected Father’s light. Father looked at each of them without love, and Raphael doubted she would ever see the emotion pass his eyes. She bit her lip, willing the tears to spill over her lashes and down her cheeks. She willed her eyes to beg, and she saw the moment Father’s gaze softened, the moment he could not bear to look at her any longer. He was an egotist, not a sadist. He would not watch his only daughter cry her eyes out when they both knew that it was performance. She was saved.

“I cannot control Lucifer once I’m gone, you know that as well as I do. But I will keep you safe while I am still alive.”

Raphael nodded, blinking back the tears that suddenly felt more real than they had mere moments before. She calmed the shaking in her throat, and then she choked out a polite “Thank you, Father.”

Father nodded, rescinding his hand from Raphael’s grip. “Before you go, promise me one more thing.”

“What?”

“None of your brothers know what we’ve discussed today. Michael doesn’t need to know--”

“He already  _ knows. _ He is not as stupid as you think he is.” 

“Raphael--”

Raphael let her clenched fist come down on the desk, but the tears still had not left her system and so it was not as fierce as it could have been. It was desperate, not angry. “You send your eldest son off on endless military duties and look disappointed each time he returns, and you expect him  _ not _ to notice that you hope for him to die?”

That silenced Father. He looked over her, his eyes returned to the familiar cold gaze, and then he looked past her. “He knows this, but he never once raised it with me?”

“Why would he?” Raphael smiled bitterly. “I am incidental to the problem. Avoidable. Michael  _ is _ the problem.”

It was not the full truth of it, though it was part of it. Raphael remembered the first time that Michael had returned, the day that he’d seen the disappointment in Father’s eyes and he’d realized what was going on. Michael had excused himself as soon as he could, and he’d raced back to the rooms that he’d shared with Raphael as a child. As soon as Raphael had walked through the door, Michael had hugged her to his chest, holding her as tight as he could. She was still little more than a child at the time, and so Michael had been a full head taller than her, able to rest his chin on top of her head and comb his fingers through her hair. She’d not said anything to him, though she’d known as well as he did that Father did not intend for Michael to return. Raphael had waited for Michael to speak, and she’d felt her heart break once more as Michael had muttered,  _ “Dammit, Raphael, I won’t let him hurt you too.”  _ Michael knew what Father intended, but more than that, he thought that his words would only lead the two of them to be hurt worse than if they’d never said anything at all. Michael did not know how to manipulate Father, not the way that Raphael did.

“So he lets himself get killed in order to avoid conflict?”

“It’s what you want, Father. He always does what you ask of him.” It was the thing about Michael that had always annoyed Raphael the most. Michael saw the truth as well as Raphael did, but he saw no way out. He would rather wallow in his sorrow and believe that he was receiving the dregs of Father’s love than attempt a solution.

Father sighed, in the way that meant he was done with the conversation. “If Michael knows, then at least keep this from the other two. Gabriel is still a child. And Lucifer… He doesn’t need to know what’s being done for him.”

Raphael nodded. It would break Lucifer’s heart, but he would still slit Raphael’s throat if given the chance. That was simply how Lucifer was. Better for him to remain blissfully unaware and ascend to his throne believing himself the beneficiary of perfect luck that left him the sole surviving heir with children to follow him.

That day plays over and over in Raphael’s mind, even nine years later. She is not the young girl that she was, but she is no less careful now than she was then. She still watches Michael leave every few weeks, and she watches him return with apathy painted upon his features each time. She lives in a palace of gold and porcelain, but she lives without a soul to whom she can confide. Father and Lucifer are her enemies, by any meaningful definition, and Gabriel is gone. Mother Rowena is absent more often than not--Raphael wonders constantly whether she would’ve left Father, if such a thing had been possible--and Kelly is rarely on her own, she is always at Lucifer’s side. Raphael lives, and she  _ will _ live, at least as long as Father remains alive, but she spends many nights awake, wondering whether that is a good thing or not.

“Your highness, Prince Michael has returned.”

Raphael looks up from the book spread across her lap. One of the servants is standing by the door to the library, her head bowed politely. “Where is he?”

“In his rooms, your highness.”

Raphael nods, dismissing the girl. There is a relief that floods through Raphael at the words--Lord Winchester’s letter had thrown the whole palace into a shambles, and Raphael had buried herself in her work to cope. Gabriel missing, Michael gone after him? It was a recipe for disaster, and Raphael couldn’t bear to see the barely-restrained joy in Father and Lucifer’s eyes. They might mourn Gabriel, sure, but they wouldn’t let that detail bring them down. With Michael back--and hopefully bringing good news about Gabriel--Raphael doesn’t have to worry.

Raphael places the book back in its place on the shelf, noting the page number she’d left off on--554--and hurrying out of the library. She is at Michael’s door in only three minutes, compared to the usual five minute walk between their rooms and the library. She does not bother knocking, as she knows her brother’s habits well, and makes her way inside.

Michael is sitting on the edge of his bed, looking only slightly worse for wear. “Is Gabriel alright?” Raphael asks, coming to sit at his side.

Michael nods, not looking up at her. “We brought him home safe.”

“We?”

“A healer went with me. One of the Winchester’s servants.”

Raphael nods, but she can tell that there’s something Michael isn’t saying. He would be able to look her in the eyes if he wasn’t thinking about something. Whether it’s related to this healer, to Gabriel, or to something else entirely remains to be seen. “Is there something special about this healer?”

“Why would you think that?”

“It’s all over your face.”

Michael smiles to himself, that soft little smile that he saves for Raphael alone. He clears his throat a moment later, and finally looks up to meet Raphael’s eyes. “He’s an omega.”

“And?”

“And if I weren’t risking his life by doing so, I would marry him.”

Raphael feels her heart breaking for Michael once more, and cannot help but push it down and keep her face neutral. Michael always insists it’s his duty to care for her, not the other way around. “If you like him so much, you should marry him anyway.”

“Raphael, I can’t. Not now. If Lucifer’s child is an alpha, you and I are as good as dead. And anyone I marry will be as well.”

“And if they’re not an alpha?”

Michael hesitates, but he blunders forward on the same path he always takes. “It’s still too dangerous.”

“Why?”

“Because Lucifer will still be after him. He’ll still try to kill him. Just because one child isn’t an alpha doesn’t mean the next won’t be.”

“Michael, please.” Raphael looks down at her hands. There are scars on the back of her left hand, nearly faded now, from where Lucifer had trailed a razor when she was 23, during one of Michael’s extended absences. Lucifer had looked her in the eye as he’d pressed the razor against the skin, always landing it just a few millimeters away from a vein.  _ One day I won’t miss, _ Lucifer had told her, and she’d known he meant it. “If not for your own sake, for mine.”

Michael shakes his head. “I can keep you safe, when his child is born we can disappear, I’ll keep you safe--”

“And how will we survive? Move to the farmland, settle down and tend the land? Just because our omega father knew how to survive that way doesn’t mean  _ we  _ know.”

“I can hunt, and you can heal people. Offer medicines in exchange for food and shelter. We can survive.”

“With the kingdom’s armies chasing us?” Raphael swallows, shaking her head. Michael is a soldier, but even he can’t fend off an army by himself. “Sooner or later, we’ll get caught. And then we’ll be right back where we started. But worse. You know he’ll punish us for running.”

Michael doesn’t respond for a long moment, and Raphael almost hopes she’s gotten to him. They’ve had this argument before, of course, but this particular iteration feels more  _ real _ than the others, more pressing. This is not some hypothetical, five-years off future. This is now, and Lucifer’s baby will be here within weeks. Maybe this time will finally break through Michael’s martyrdom complex. “I’ll protect you, somehow.”

So they’re doomed.

“How have things been, in my absence?”

Raphael doesn’t let herself roll her eyes. Subtle. “Fine,” she says, even though things are rarely  _ fine _ when Michael is gone. He doesn’t need to know that Father is isolating himself for most of the day, or that Kelly always looks like she wants to say something and isn’t allowed. He doesn’t need to know the way that Lucifer sits at Raphael’s side in the library and refuses to leave, absentmindedly listing ideas for all the things he’ll do once he’s king.  _ I’d have to kill Michael, of course, but I think I’d keep you around. We could play tea party, couldn’t we? Real knives, of course. _

“Is Kelly doing alright?”

Raphael nods. “Naomi has been dealing with her daily care. She tells me that she’s doing well, and that the baby seems to be developing normally.” Or, as Naomi has taken to putting it,  _ the prognosis is terrible. _ Naomi had, if nothing else, picked up Raphael’s sense of humor over the past year.

“That’s good.” Michael nods to himself, and Raphael can tell that the conversation is coming to an end. He’ll want to be alone, as he always does after he returns. Raphael can’t help but want to get the last word in.

“Michael, I know you care about this omega, and I know you want to keep him safe. But our kingdom comes before the life of any one individual, including you or me. Don’t give up without even fighting for it. You understand me, Michael?”

She stares at him, and she can tell that the fight has gone out of him, even though she doubts he’ll agree entirely. Eventually, he nods, and Raphael takes that as the closest thing to recognition that she’ll get.

The worst part of what Lucifer has become, over the years, is remembering  _ why _ he had become this way. Children are not born to hate others, or to be violent, they are trained into it. And Lucifer had been trained, even if he would deny it and claim his brashness and elegance and cunning as an identity. Lucifer had been trained into his position, into his arrogance and his entitlement. He had been trained to hate his own siblings, and especially, to hate Michael.

Gabriel had been a late crawler, and an even later walker. At a year and a half, his motor skills most closely resembled those of a caterpillar, and Lucifer and Raphael managed to find hours of fun in playing “tag” with their baby caterpillar. The rules were simple: stand in one place, clapping your hands until Gabriel noticed, and then gesture him forward until he was about to catch you. At the last moment, run away,  _ maybe next time!  _ already on your tongue. Every so often, they would let Gabriel catch them, just to see his wide smile and hear his bubbling laughter.

Michael didn’t partake in their games, but he would watch on, sitting on a nearby couch, book in hand and ready to intervene if anything ever got out of hand. When Lucifer would break the established rules (as he did, every so often,) he would come to sit at Michael’s side, using their big brother as a shield to hide himself from Raphael’s righteous anger. Michael would laugh, running a hand through Lucifer’s hair, and pull the boy closer. Raphael would watch them, and though looking back she would think herself foolish, she always felt a tinge of jealousy run through herself at the sight. Who was she jealous of--Michael or Lucifer?

It would be foolish, even then, for her to be jealous of Lucifer. Since their omega father’s death, she and Michael had shared a set of rooms. They always knew where the other was, rarely leaving each other’s presence unless they’d been summoned away. Many of the servants referred to them as a duo, rather than individuals, even if it wasn’t in the most polite of terms.  _ His _ children. Raphael did not understand, at the time, what the implication was. She would only learn to hate herself later on.

So perhaps she was jealous of Michael. Even though Lucifer played games with her, it often felt more like he was playing with Gabriel; even though he would pick flowers from the garden and help weave them into her hair, it was always explained with  _ the daisies are pretty, I don’t want to waste them. _ Lucifer clearly loved Michael best, of all the siblings, and it was plain to see why. Michael had been the first to hold him, after Father and the late Queen. Michael had steadied him through his first steps, had been there for his first words, had given him a million little encouraging smiles and had held him the night that his mother had died. Of course Lucifer loved Michael. How could he not?

Their games could never last forever. The maids that watched over them during the day often left them to their own devices, trusting in Michael to keep watch. But when they returned with Father, the world froze. Father would come, and he would take Lucifer’s hand, leading him away. He would pretend to keep his voice down, but Michael and Raphael would always hear when he said, “You shouldn’t be playing with them, Lucifer. They’re not a good influence on you.”

As if Father was any better of an influence.

There is no room in the palace organized with greater precision than Raphael’s study. The library is organized by author name, the archives by date, and Michael--God help him--has a penchant for color coding his towels. But there is no single organizational system more complex and complete than Raphael’s. 

To start with, she’d collected medical books, both the more formal ones and those purported to be written by self-proclaimed wizards, and she’d organized them by usefulness and credibility, with usefulness determining height on the shelf and credibility determining which shelf. From there, it was alphabetized by author, if available, or date written, if unavailable, or date that it came into Raphael’s possession, if the date written was unclear. Other than the formal medical books, she kept detailed health records for herself and her family members, so that she could make sure that no one gave anyone else a medication that they’d previously reacted badly to, and so that she could recognize patterns where they arose. The records were sorted by seniority within the family, starting from Father, then going to Mother Rowena, Michael, Lucifer, Kelly, Raphael, and finally to Gabriel. Raphael also kept detailed notes on any of the healers who’d come to work in the palace, whether as an occupation or merely to study under Raphael, and those notes were likewise alphabetized by family name, place of origin, and given name.

Raphael is strict about it: anyone who comes into her study has to understand the system, because anything out of place  _ would _ be an issue. She would’ve trusted Michael with it--his memory is exact, he is always able to remember a book’s place--but he does not have much interest in medicine, and so rarely feels the need to do anything other than consult his own records. Out of Raphael’s healers, she only trusts one in her study without her own presence: Naomi.

“Discovered anything?” Raphael asks as she closes the door behind herself. She locks the door out of force of habit. She does not like being interrupted.

Naomi is sat at the chair next to the extra desk Raphael keeps for visitors. She has two books open in front of her, a third stacked at the back of the desk, leaning against the wall. “Not yet. Nothing that’s guaranteed to work, in any case.”

“We don’t need a certainty, if none is available,” Raphael says. “We will use any weapon we can get.”

Naomi nods, looking up. “Your highness, what if… What if the child  _ is _ an alpha? I know you’ve decided to look for solutions beyond that question, but I still worry that we have a more immediate problem. There  _ are _ steps that we could take.”

Raphael knows what she’s insinuating. She’s thought about it herself. “We will not  _ kill _ my brother’s child.”

“Even if it’s the only solution?”

Raphael does not meet Naomi’s eyes. She cannot. Naomi is, after all, Raphael’s best student. She is a mirror of Raphael, herself an alpha from a noble family that barely wanted her, and sometimes she reflects back the parts of Raphael that Raphael is too afraid to face. Sometimes she is correct, and sometimes she is immoral. Amoral. That does not diminish her reasoning.

“We know what to do, if we must,” Raphael says, although she prays that it will not be necessary. Raphael would not hesitate, if it were someone outside of her family who stood a threat, but this is Lucifer’s child. For all of the harm that he does, Lucifer is still her brother, and his child may yet have the pure soul that Lucifer had as a child. Raphael has never been a proponent of blaming the child for the mistakes of the parent. It would be deeply hypocritical.

Naomi sighs, standing from her place at the desk. She crosses the room to stand only a few feet from Raphael, and hesitates. Raphael waits. “I know you want to believe that Prince Michael will do the right thing,” Naomi says, after a moment. “But you must be ready to take things into your own hands, if he fails you.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” Raphael says. “That’s what  _ we’re  _ doing.”

“That’s not what I mean. You have a claim to the throne as well, if you were the first to have an heir--”

“I will not.”

“Your highness, please, you must’ve considered--”

“Naomi, I cannot. I’ve made a promise that I cannot break.”

“Only a few weeks, now.”

The air at the dinner table is already tense enough to make one’s stomach ache, and of course, Lucifer cannot help but make it worse.

Michael, of course, sees a challenge even when there is none. “At least we’ll all be relieved of the suspense.”

“Mmm… Is the suspense killing you, brother?”

“I don’t know, Lucifer, I’m feeling quite content at the moment.”

“How you can be content when you nearly  _ lost _ our baby brother, I don’t think I can understand.”

“And which of us was it that brought him back safe?”

“Enough.”

Michael and Lucifer both look up at Father. The women of the table, in contrast, are all engaging in intense staring contests with their soups. Raphael hates when Michael and Lucifer argue, and it only gets worse when Father gets involved. Kelly and Mother Rowena evidently feel the same.

“Boys, no arguing tonight. It’s not good for the baby’s health, right, Kelly?”

Kelly manages to get out a quiet reassurance of her child’s health, but it’s overshadowed by Lucifer saying, “But arguing is practically the family sport. Who would we be if we didn’t argue?”

“More well adjusted,” Raphael mutters, already knowing that she will be ignored.

Michael charges on into the argument, now with new ammunition. “Lucifer, Father is right. If you want to argue with me, you can do it when we’re not disturbing the rest of our family.”

“I was going to do that already,” Lucifer says. “But this is more fun. Audiences, you know?”

The one thing Raphael appreciates about having Father present for arguments is that it tends to tone Lucifer down. Michael’s presence has a similar chilling effect, but Father is the only one who can truly claim to control Lucifer’s behavior. When Lucifer is alone with Raphael, he can make whatever threats he wants. But with Father around, he knows that his threats will be taken seriously. Father has, if nothing else, made sure that Raphael remains mostly unharmed.

“I think you should ask our ‘audience’ whether they’d like to see the show you’re putting on,” Michael says.

“Who wouldn’t appreciate my show? I’m the most entertaining person in this family!”

Except for Gabriel, of course. Then again, object permanence has never been Lucifer’s strong suit.

Raphael was always scared of lightning storms, when she was a child. Their kingdom was no stranger to bad weather--the mountainous terrain surrounding the capital meant that four months of the year left the capital covered in snow, and the flatlands flooded every few years. But the rain, when it came instead of snow or hail, tended to come without thunder or lightning to accompany it. It would pour rain for days at a time, but it was not threatening, not if you were in the mountains.

On nights when the thunder and lightning came, though, Raphael always lay awake. She had seen the lightning strike, once, when Father had taken her and Michael on a trip to the flatlands. The tree that it had struck, several hundred yards from them, had burst into fire that was not extinguished for several minutes, despite the heavy rain. Raphael had felt her heart hammer in her chest as she watched the leaves and the fruit on the branches burn, and she’d clung to Michael’s side, refusing to leave until she was sure that the fire hadn’t spread. He had stood in the rain for her, letting both of them be soaked, simply to assuage her fear.

Michael knew that Raphael wouldn’t sleep well when the thunder came. The palace was made of brick and stone, not wood, but Raphael was still afraid that somehow their home would catch fire. So Michael would cross the room, after the first growl of thunder sounded against the walls, and he would lay down beside her, tucking her against his side. They did not need to speak, but Michael often did anyway, telling her little stories or singing her lullabies that--apparently--their omega father had once sung to them.

One night, while the thunder echoed outside, Michael said, “I was reading about lightning, recently.”

“Yeah?”

“Lightning is different from most other disasters. Other disasters, they happen widely, indiscriminately. If a tsunami strikes one village along the coast, it’s going to strike many villages, right? But with lightning, it’s different. Lightning strikes more harshly than other disasters, but it strikes in fewer places. It’s...careful, almost. Mitigated disaster.”

“Is this supposed to make me feel better?”

“I’m getting to that part.”

“Get there quicker, then.”

Michael laughed, although it almost sounded more like a sigh. “The odds of any particular spot being struck by lightning are tiny. So you’re almost certainly  _ not _ going to get hurt by it.”

“And what were our odds of being born royalty?”

Michael looked at her as if she had just asked a nonsense question, and then he had looked away, shaking his head. He’d sighed, and when he turned back to her, Raphael could see a new clarity in his eyes. “My point is, you don’t need to be afraid of it. I understand why you’re scared. I used to be scared of fire, when I was younger. But you know what I did?”

“What?”

“I stopped seeing the fire as something separate from me, something that threatened me. I started seeing myself  _ as _ the fire, as the passion and the creation and the destruction. And I know I’m not much of a fire yet--”

Raphael snorted. Her preteen brother had scarcely created or destroyed anything in his life.

“--But I will be, one day. So maybe, if I’m fire, then you can be lightning.”

Kelly goes into labor four days later. It is a long labor, and Raphael and Naomi attend her for well over thirty hours before the child is finally born. Lucifer only checks in on them once every four hours or so, gallivanting off on his own business in the inverals.

Raphael feels her heart beating heavily in her chest as she hands the newborn to Kelly for the first time. Only she will be able to smell his subgender, at least for the first few weeks of his life. What she says next could doom them all.

Kelly smiles at her baby boy, holding him close to her chest. He does not cry, but he coos gently. A happy baby. Kelly leans in to scent him, and when she looks back up to Raphael and Naomi, there is a smile on her lips, wider than either alpha has seen on her in months.

“He’s an omega,” Kelly says. “My baby is an omega.”

Raphael rarely goes to the portrait hall. She does not like to stand under the painted gaze of her ancestors, not when she knows how they would disapprove of her. But more than that, she hates seeing the absence.

The portrait at the end of the hall, next to the doorway, was painted only four years before, a few months before Gabriel’s wedding. Kelly had not yet entered the family, and so it was only the six of them. Father, sitting on his throne; Mother Rowena, in a chair at his side that was clearly  _ not _ a throne; Michael and Raphael, to their left; and Lucifer and Gabriel, to their right. No one looks happy--but then again, portraits rarely portray the smiles of their subjects. 

The next painting is Lucifer and Kelly’s wedding portrait. Kelly had looked beautiful, Raphael had to give her that. A light purple dress, flowers woven into her braided hair, glitter on her cheeks. Even Lucifer looked happy, or at least, he looked proud. The next two portraits, on either side of the hall, are also wedding portraits. Father with Mother Rowena, on one side; and Father with the late Queen, on the other.

Next to the portrait of the late Queen, there is an absence. They had taken the portrait down, twenty-four years ago, but they had not bothered to rearrange the other portraits to cover the absence. Sometimes, when Raphael is feeling particularly cynical, she thinks that Father ordered it to be left this way. So that when Raphael or Michael walked down this hall, whether it was on official business or out of curiosity, they would be met with a warning. And Raphael understands why the portrait had to be taken down, she really does. She just wishes that it hadn’t been distorted like this. She would rather it be forgotten than to remain loudly, openly unforgiven. 

Farther down the hall, there is a portrait of Father with his family. His sister is in the portrait as well-- _ Amara. _ Raphael had never been told her name; it is not a name that is ever spoken within the palace walls. But the records still keep her name. The archives beneath the palace still hold her journal. Raphael does not dare touch it. It would feel too much like an acceptance of her fate to read it, to see the words written by an alpha woman who’d done nothing wrong but pose an imagined threat and had been killed for it anyway.

She turns back, returning to the portrait at the end of the hall. She stares into the painted eyes of her eldest brother, and she sees the heroism he always tries to project. Where is this painted Michael when she needs him? He has a chance, now, and Raphael hopes that he will not squander it.

The first time that Raphael ever saw Michael and Lucifer truly fight, Raphael had not yet learned to read. But she liked to sit at Michael’s side and look at his books, and when he was in the mood for indulging her he would read a page or two aloud to her. It was rather mundane topics. Even as children, royalty allowed no time for leisure. History must be learned, strategy mastered. No time for fairytales.

Lucifer came into the library in a rage, his eyes red with tears. “You,” he’d said, pointing at them, and it had not been clear which of them he’d meant. Perhaps, he had meant both. “My mother is dead because of you.”

“Lucifer,” Michael had warned, “You know that’s not true.”

“It is! If you hadn’t been born, my mother would still be alive!” Lucifer looked down, but when he looked back up, he’d not calmed down at all. If anything, he was worse. Tears now running down his cheeks, his breathing ragged. He looked wrecked, and he sounded it too. “Your--  _ He-- _ He killed my mother, because he wanted to be king consort! He wanted to make sure you would be Father’s heir!”

It was the first time that Raphael had ever heard the accusation leveled. As she grew up, she would learn that it was only fact. That the reason she’d grown up without an omega parent was that he’d been charged, tried in the court of Father’s opinion, and executed for his crime. But as a child, barely able to understand the concept of death or of murder or inheritance, it was the first time the idea had ever come into her understanding. And it was heartbreaking. Why would her own omega father do that, why would he be so selfish to put his son’s inheritance above the life of another? Lucifer was not a bad child, not by birth. He could’ve been a good king, if only he had been given the chance.

“And you blame us for that?” Michael said, still unwilling to return Lucifer’s anger. Lucifer had not yet broken Michael; Michael had not yet realized that Father  _ wanted _ Lucifer to hate Michael.

“I do.” Lucifer took a deep, shuddering breath. “And I won’t let you take this from me too! I’ll be king one day, and then I’ll make you hurt the way that I do.”

Michael knocks on Raphael’s door, the night after Jack is born. As is normal for them, Michael does not wait for a response to enter.

“Yes?” Raphael asks, not looking up from her book.

“His name is Adam.”

“What?”

“The omega that I want to marry. His name is Adam.”

Raphael looks up, and sees that her brother is not dressed for bed. He is dressed to travel, to ride.  _ Thank God. _ “You’re going to him?”

Michael nods. “You were right. With Jack being an omega, we have a chance. And I cannot guarantee anything-- If Adam refuses, if he believes it is too dangerous or he simply wishes not to marry me, I cannot force him. But I will ask.”

“Thank you,” Raphael says, and she hopes that it will be enough. “It’s four days travel to the Winchesters, isn’t it?”

“Three, if I go quickly.”

“Ride with the wind, then.”


	3. Michael

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And today we have Michael and Adam's adventures in honest communication, featuring the Winchesters and their utter inability to care about Adam except when it's a reason to argue with Michael.
> 
> Next week's chapter is a Gabriel POV chapter, so if you're reading this for Sabriel (you poor brave soul) or you think Sam has been a bit of an asshole so far, don't worry. Next week will be kind to you.

Michael has always believed that his Father has some kind of benevolent, wise plan. Father is only a man, of course, and he’d made his mistakes, but he’d done his best to manage his spouses and to raise his children. He’d been a steady enough king, although not one who would likely make for longer than a paragraph or two in less-detailed history books. He knows his children, and he knows the situation that they are in. Sure, Michael may be a more  _ capable _ heir than Lucifer, but given what had happened with their omega parents, it seemed correct that Lucifer should take the throne. If Michael were to take the throne, with everything that had happened, well-- Michael didn’t have faith that the lords would be okay with it.

Still. Father can be-- Well, not wrong, Father is never completely wrong, but perhaps he had miscalculated. If Michael takes a servant, a  _ commoner,  _ as his spouse, then clearly there will be no reason for any of the lords to throw a fit over favoritism. If Michael can please the lords more, if he can prove himself a competent ruler, then perhaps they will be willing to forget the unfortunate history. Then Father will have miscalculated, and Adam will be his, and no one has to die.

This is what Michael tells himself, for three days. He is still not sure he is correct. But he wants to see Raphael smile again and live without fear. He wants to keep Adam safe, he wants to hold him and know that Adam’s trust in him isn’t built on infatuation alone. He wants to believe that Adam is good for him and for their kingdom. 

Michael wants so badly to believe that he is doing the right thing.

He is deathly aware that he is probably not.

Michael arrives at the Winchester estate at mid-afternoon, a little under three days since he left the palace. He has barely slept in those three days, getting around four hours a night so that he could continue traveling. He knew that his horse was most likely exhausted, but he can stay at the Winchester estate for a few days, now that he has arrived. He just needed to get there as quickly as possible. Once he has Adam in his arms, it does not matter exactly when he returns.

“Prince Michael,” John says, as Michael walks into the main sitting room, “I had no idea you would be visiting.”

“It was a last minute decision,” Michael offers, in lieu of a real explanation. “I won’t be staying more than a few days.”

“Here to visit Gabriel again?”

Well, that’s one good excuse. Michael wishes he’d thought of it himself. “I wanted to tell him the news about our nephew in person.”

John raises an eyebrow. “Prince Lucifer’s child?”

“His name is Jack,” Michael says absently. “He’s an omega.”

John nods, the slightest look of relief on his face. Perhaps the lord’s sentiments against Lucifer are stronger than Michael thought. “Good to hear. Although I suspect your brother is less than happy.”

“You could say that, yes.” Michael avoided his brother as best he could, even under normal circumstances, and following Jack’s birth, his instinct to avoid Lucifer had only heightened. He’d still heard the barely-concealed angry rants through the walls.

“Well,” John says, when Michael offers nothing more, “I’ll have the servants arrange your rooms, same as last time.”

“Thank you. Is my brother in his rooms?”

“I haven’t received word of him doing anything outside of the house today, so I would expect so.”

Michael nods, and before John can say anything else, he makes his way up the stairs and toward Gabriel’s rooms. He doesn’t hear any sound from inside, and just to make certain that he doesn’t walk in on anything, he actually knocks.

“Come in!”

Michael waltzes in, and a look of confusion paints itself across Gabriel’s face. “Mikey? What are you doing back so soon?”

“I came to give you the news in person.” Michael takes a seat at the foot of Gabriel’s chaise. The younger prince, of course, immediately puts his feet in Michael’s lap, as if the alpha were a footrest. “We have an omega nephew.”

“Well that’s a relief.” Gabriel relaxes into the lounge, but his eyes remain fixed on Michael. “You finally going to do something to make sure we don’t have to worry like this?”

“Yes.” Even Gabriel is this worried about Lucifer? Well, Michael knew that Lucifer could be unkind to Raphael, but Michael had never seen Lucifer target Gabriel for anything. Gabriel always seems happy and lighthearted, but he is clever. But then again, clever does not equal moral, and Michael worries more than anything that his choice is not moral. Father  _ is _ morality, he always knows how best to solve situations so that no one has to be unduly hurt. Even if Gabriel doesn’t want Lucifer on the throne, does that mean that Michael ascending would be any better? “That’s the other reason I came.”

“Have you asked lover boy yet?”

Michael tilts his head. “Lover boy?”

“Yeah. Adam?”

“We were… We were that obvious?”

“Beyond.” Gabriel laughs. “Buddy, if you wanted to avoid your little affair being noticed, you probably shouldn’t’ve slept in the same bed with him.”

Well. At least Gabriel seems plenty okay with Adam being part of the family. “Anyway,” Michael says, trying his best to move on from the knowledge that he was not as subtle as he thought, “Yes. I’ve come back to talk to Adam, to explain all of this, and, if he agrees, to bring him back to the palace with me.”

“You talked to Father about him?”

“No.”

“Wow, rebellious, Mikey.”

Michael rolls his eyes. “That’s not what this is about.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Gabriel says, in a tone that makes it very clear he doesn’t believe Michael at all. “But you will be glad to know that I’ve already filled Adam in on the situation. The inheritance stuff, at least. The rest is for you to tell him.”

“You told him?” Sure, Michael was more cautious about family secrets than absolutely necessary, but for Gabriel to just be exposing their conflict to servants--even if it  _ was _ only Adam--is concerning.

“Yeah. I wanted to make sure he knew why you were running off and leaving him behind. Didn’t want him moping around my room like a kicked puppy for the next few weeks. And it’s not like I was telling him something the Winchesters don’t know.”

“Still.” Michael can see Gabriel’s point, but he’s not going to concede it. It’s the principle of it. “But he seems...open, to the idea of getting involved in our mess?”

“Seems like it.”

Well, that was better than nothing. Michael still hates to put Adam in danger, as he knows he will, but if Adam knows and is okay with risking himself, then Michael cannot deny him that right to choose. “I’ll talk to him later tonight.”

“Alright. But Michael.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t tell any of the Winchesters what you’re planning until you’ve done it.”

The Winchesters, though not the most functional family in existence, are as insistent upon family meals as Michael’s own family. This includes any guests that are visiting, and Michael suspects that this insistence is part of the family’s dysfunction. 

Michael is not the only guest at the Winchester estate on this particular day. Sitting beside him is Lady Anna Milton, Castiel’s older sister and family alpha. On her other side is her omega wife, Ruby. Michael does his best not to engage in gossip, but it is hard to ignore the “secret” romances that go on among his peers. Anna and Dean had engaged in a summer-long affair when Dean was a teenager and Anna was in her early twenties. They were both alphas, and so they knew it wouldn’t last, but they seemed content while together. There was no lasting animosity between them, at least not as far as Michael could tell, and Anna had been overjoyed when Dean had married her little brother. They are the more functional side of the family, which is rarely a trait one can attribute to anything involving Dean Winchester.

In contrast, Ruby and Sam are infamous among the nobility for their years-long, barely concealed ongoing affair. Anna is mostly permissive of it (after all, a claimed omega can bear children for none but their alpha,) but Gabriel and Eileen seem less than thrilled about her presence. 

This means, of course, that Castiel and Anna are carrying the conversation for the whole table. 

“Are you coming to visit us next summer?” Anna says, in a tone that indicates she is not asking.

“If we’re not too busy,” Castiel replies. “Although I’m always happy to see the lake. Dean, you can take Claire fishing!”

“So fishing is an acceptable toddler activity?” Dean asks. Clearly the hunting incident from the last time Michael visited has not been forgotten.

“Yes.”

Eileen and Gabriel, meanwhile, are busy making hand gestures to each other that Michael assumes is some kind of language. Michael knows that Eileen is both deaf and well-educated, and he knows that there is such a thing as a language communicated by gestures, but it was never something he’d learned about in detail. Whatever it is, Gabriel seems fluent. Given their frequent, darting glances in Ruby’s direction, Michael has no doubt as to what they’re discussing. Luckily, Sam is either oblivious or willingly ignorant.

The first course is brought in by a team of servants, and Michael immediately locks eyes with Adam. The young man looks almost exactly as he had when Michael had left him. He looks surprised to see Michael, but quickly schools his expression into the passive one he wears when he doesn’t want to be noticed. Michael nods at him, and once Adam has laid down the plate he was carrying onto the table with the others, he leaves the room alongside the others. Michael worries that Adam had not noticed his gesture--or worse, was angry at him for some reason that Michael is unaware of--but he returns a moment later, carrying a pitcher of wine. He moves around the table, quickly refilling the glasses.

When he comes to Michael’s side, he leans forward far enough that Michael can speak into his ear without being noticed. He pours the wine into Michael’s cup slower than he had with the others, and so it must be intentional.

“Come to my rooms tonight,” Michael murmurs into Adam’s ear. “We need to talk.”

Adam finishes pouring the wine, and leans back. He meets Michael’s eyes for half a second, and he nods, nearly imperceptibly. He moves quickly onto Anna, and leaves the room once he is finished going around the table. The others, who have continued in their banal, passive-aggressive conversations, don’t seem to have noticed Adam much at all. Good.

Adam does not return with the other servants when they serve the following courses, and Michael suspects that he had traded duties with someone. To avoid or to prepare, Michael isn’t sure. He simply hopes that Adam will be willing to hear him out.

Adam comes to his rooms an hour after dinner finishes. Michael had worried he wouldn’t come, but as Adam slips inside the room, sitting down in the chair across from Michael as if it were where he naturally belonged, Michael feels a wave of simultaneous contentment and nervousness rush over him.

“You wanted to talk to me?”

There’s a rigidness to Adam’s posture, as much as the casualness with which he had entered the room projects confidence. They had grown into something closer than Michael was entirely comfortable with, last time they had been together, but Michael had been careful to keep some distance between them. That distance has grown, and it feels more like a chasm than like a gap in the rock. Well, Michael will just have to build a bridge over it.

“I do. Gabriel told me that he’d informed you of my family’s situation.” Michael forces himself to relax into the seat, hoping that letting go of his own tenseness will allow Adam to do the same.

“He told me you and Lucifer are both heirs, and which of you gets the throne is decided by how quickly you can have an alpha kid.”

Not the worst summary. Leaves out a few things, sure, but Michael can get to that. Better get the most important information out of the way before delving into family secrets. “Well, in good news, Lucifer’s son is an omega.”

Adam nods, biting his lip. He doesn’t look particularly affected by the news. “Good to hear.”

“I, um,” Michael looks away. How does he say this in a polite way? “My sister and I had a conversation, when I was home. She thought that, given the window of opportunity before Lucifer has another child, it would be prudent for me to attempt to have an heir of my own. Now, preferably.”

“And you took her advice?”

When does Michael not take Raphael’s advice? Well, he doesn’t always act on it, but he always listens to it. Father’s advice out-rules Raphael’s, of course, but Raphael is usually correct otherwise. “Of course.”

“And I take it I’m the baby incubator, in this plan?”

“You would be my  _ husband, _ Adam. That’s a very honorable position, and you would be treated accordingly, both by myself and by others--”

“Listen, Michael.” Adam looks at him, and his eyes are just-- They’re not quite  _ angry, _ but there’s something behind them that Michael hasn’t seen before. Resentment, resignation, what? Why? “After you left, I started thinking. And what we had-- What we  _ thought _ we had, last time, it was too quick. We don’t really know each other. And I’m not… I’m not telling you ‘no.’ But what I am saying is that we don’t need to pretend to be something we’re not, especially at first. If we can grow into a real, loving bond, great. But right now, sitting here, you asking me to marry you-- This is us making an agreement to solve problems. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Michael knows that Adam is correct, but his words hurt anyway. They hurt far more than they should. Why does he feel like this, after only spending a few days, barely a week with him? He had thought the omega foolish, at first, even reckless, but when he’d seen how Adam was so willing to give himself in service of others, Michael had started to fall. Perhaps it was, in a way, because he had seen a better version of himself reflected back. Michael serves his people, and he wants them to be safe and to be prosperous, yet he knows in his heart that part of his motivation has always been bound up in what Father tells him. Michael is constantly torn between service in and of itself, and service in honor of his Father’s glory. Adam doesn’t have the same conflict, he is  _ pure. _ He isn’t trying to please anyone--at least not anyone living--and so his motives seem more trustworthy.

And perhaps part of what Michael saw in Adam, part of what he came to like in him, was the way that his will to serve could transfer into this very situation. That Michael, if he ever allowed himself to be worthy of an heir, would find no omega more willing to throw themselves into the fire than Adam. And here they are, and Adam is only proving Michael correct, and that’s so much worse. Because Michael isn’t sure whether his love and care is selfish or not, and part of him wonders why he’s even worried about it. There are practicalities in life that pile higher than fortress walls, and Michael’s  _ emotions _ and  _ worries _ are not practical. If Adam is willing to do this, Michael has to let him set the terms. It’s only fair, even if it hurts.

“I understand. And I do hope that we can grow into something more, but I recognize why you want to set that boundary.”

“It’s not a boundary.”

“What is it, then?”

Adam looks to the side, and sighs. After his speech, it seems like the energy has gone out of him, his shoulders finally falling from their rigidness. Like he’d contemplated what to say and how to say it and as soon as it had finally been released from within the bounds of his mind, it had set him free. Michael is just glad that he’s let go of the tension. “It’s… It’s a recognition. You know, ‘admitting that you have a problem is the first step in solving it,’ that kind of thing. If you sit here thinking we’re madly in love, and I sit here thinking that we’re allies, we’re going to end up saying some pretty weird stuff to each other, and it probably won’t end well. So I’m not saying that you have to act any different, just because I don’t think we’re at that point yet, but I’m saying that we don’t lie to each other. We don’t feel like we have to lie to make each other happy.”

That’s a bit convoluted, for the level of communication that Michael is used to--most of the people in Michael’s family are more obsessed with whether their words will rock the boat or not, rather than whether or not those words are true--but Michael can see the value in it. “Alright.”

Adam nods. “Your turn, then.”

Michael furrows his eyebrows. “My turn for what?”

“Tell me how you feel. I told you where I am, so you need to let me know where you are.”

Openness isn’t exactly a strong-suit of Michael’s. Raphael is the only person who can get information out of Michael that he doesn’t want to tell, and that’s only because she can read his secrets from facial expressions alone. It seems that Adam might be becoming the second person on that list. “I think… Being away from you, it made me understand what I would be giving up if I decided not to pursue this. And while we are grounded in the realities of our present situation, I do want this to be a real, caring relationship, rather than simply a way of solving a problem.”

Michael always thought he wouldn’t get the chance to fall in love. It was simply not a possibility, especially not once he’d realized Father’s plan for him and Lucifer. Michael wasn’t supposed to meet someone and get married and fall in love, he was supposed to die heroically, in a way that Father could be proud of. Lucifer was the one who was allowed to imagine weddings and children’s birthdays, who could be celebrated by the common people for bringing more princes into existence. Michael’s only chance at gaining the love of his Father and his people was to give himself in service and to come home in a porcelain casket. Michael had even started to daydream of it, sometimes, of how his body would lie in state in the chapel; of how the bells would toll for him; of how Father would read a eulogy that would finally espouse the pride he felt for his doomed eldest son. And then Michael would imagine Raphael, her hair plaited beneath an ice-blue scarf, kneeling by his casket and keeping wake, alone in the chapel. He knows that she would cry, even though she hasn’t openly cried in years. It is Raphael that always snaps him out of this daydream, that reminds him that it isn’t something to wish for. Michael wants Raphael to smile, not to mourn.

“Alright.” Adam swallows. “I have… I have another condition.”

“A condition?”

Adam nods. “You said that marrying you would put me in danger. I think it’s only fair that I get to ask for something, as a condition of my agreement.”

“Go ahead.”

“The rule about royalty having to marry anyone they impregnate, could you get that rule extended to all nobility? Once you’re king, and all.”

That’s a very specific request. Why would that be what Adam would ask, out of everything? There were surely a million things more personal and relevant to Adam’s situation, but he chose this. What, out of the goodness of his heart? Or was there something that Michael didn’t know? “The king is able to make that into law, yes. And I will accept it, as a condition.”

Adam nods, looking satisfied and nervous at the same time. “Alright, so now that we’re agreed, where do we go from here?”

And this is where the conversation verges into uncomfortable territory, at least for Michael. Given Adam’s fondness of both honesty and bluntness, Michael doubts Adam will have the same hang-ups as Michael. “Well, given the time sensitive nature of everything going on, it would be best if we,” he searches for a euphemism and lands on, “create the child as soon as possible.”

“I figured,” Adam says. Luckily, he doesn’t comment on Michael’s choice of words. “So we, uh, consummate it tonight, and then what?”

“Well, first off, it’s more than just  _ sex. _ It’s standard in marriages involving nobility and royalty to claim the omega, especially if the ‘consummation’ precedes more formal documentation and such.”

“I figured,” Adam says, and evidently Michael must look confused at this, as Adam continues, “All of the Winchesters’ omegas have claiming marks. It’s not the most common thing among servants, at least not if they’re not getting involved with nobility, so... I figured it must be a nobility thing.”

“And you’re… Okay with it?”

“Course. I mean, it’s part of marrying you, and therefore part of our agreement.”

Michael nods, but that really wasn’t what he meant. “You understand the consequences of claiming, though, don’t you?”

“I mean, I know it means you can only have kids with the alpha that claimed you.”

“That’s the main consequence, yes.”

“I feel a ‘but’ coming.”

Michael rolls his eyes. “But, there are other possible consequences. Possible because they don’t occur for everyone. Being able to more easily influence each other’s emotions, sense each other’s locations, even something resembling telepathy, in rare cases.”

“Wow.” Adam bites his lip. “Any idea why those happen to some people and not others?”

Raphael had attempted to explain it to Michael a few times. Apparently, some of the books she’d collected listed various possible causes. Michael didn’t put too much stock in it, though, given the books had mostly come from her “questionably reliable” shelves. “Not really.”

“Well that’s helpful.”

Michael shrugs. “I’d tell you if I knew.”

Adam nods, and then looks away for a moment. “So, after tonight, do we just go back to the palace?”

“We can stay here a few more days, if you’d like. We’re effectively married once I claim you, so there’s no pressure for us to return by a certain date, or anything like that.”

“Well, I personally would rather get out of here sooner rather than later.”

“Why?”

Adam just shakes his head. “You’ll find out tomorrow, don’t worry.”

That’s not reassuring. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Adam stands up and walks around the desk. With a little smirk on his lips, as if he’s trying to convince himself--and Michael--to put that topic of conversation behind them, he climbs into Michael’s lap. That’s one way to do things. “Now, are you going to kiss me or not?”

Michael watches as Adam rubs his fingers over the claiming mark on his neck. The bite mark is still fresh, but it’s stopped bleeding. Michael had been worried that it bled at all--he’d always heard that the marks barely bled.

“Does it hurt?” Michael asks.

Adam shakes his head, lifting his hand away from the mark. “Little bit sore, but not that bad. Not worse than a normal bruise.”

“You’re not saying that just to make me feel better?”

Adam laughs. He curls onto his side, letting his head rest against Michael’s chest. Though it is not the first time they’ve lain like this, it is the first time that it has felt so intimate; that they are truly skin-to-skin and that the feeling of what they’ve just done still lingers in their veins. “I thought you’d realized by this point that I am the honesty master. No lies from me.”

“And am I not allowed to be worried about you despite that?”

“Mmm. You make a good point.”

Michael laughs. He runs a hand through Adam’s hair. “You’re feeling alright, though? Not just the mark?”

“Better than alright.” Adam smiles up at him, and Michael’s enchanted. “First thing I wanted to do was jump in bed with you, it’s not like I’m having mixed emotions about it.”

“Just making sure.” After what Adam had said earlier, Michael feels like he can never assume anything. Adam was here, with him, his husband laying at his side, and yet-- Yet Michael could not say that it was a true indication of Adam’s affection. How odd a situation, and how difficult. “If you’re not… If you don’t feel like we’re in love, then why are you acting like we are?”

Adam looks up at him, confused. “I’m… Do you  _ want _ me to push you away? I mean, we don’t have to be  _ in love _ to cuddle. We cuddled before. You know, actions and trust come before genuine emotions. So. We’re building that trust, right?”

“Right.”

“I mean, how many noble marriages have you seen that ever actually started with love?”

“Almost none, in truth.”

“But a lot of them come to care about each other, right?”

Well, that depends upon your definition of  _ a lot. _ “Not all of them.”

“Okay, but think about Sam and Gabriel. They were pretty clearly a political marriage, but they actually do get along really well now, even if they’ve still got some problems.”

“They weren’t a political marriage.” Michael scoffs. Gabriel? If he’d wanted to marry someone for political reasons, there are dozens of families that Father would’ve preferred Gabriel marry into over the Winchesters. “Like I told you, Gabriel was in love when they were first married.”

“Well, maybe it was only political on one side, then.”

Sam-- Damn him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s not like I’m close enough to the Winchesters to know all their private thoughts, or anything, but Sam was definitely more distant about the whole thing than someone in love would be. Or, it seemed that way to me, at least.”

“In what way?”

“I mean, Sam was also engaged to Eileen already, at that point. And he visited Gabriel...maybe three times, in the six months before they were married? He went to visit Eileen every other week. And we all know the distances from here to Eileen’s family and here to the capital aren’t that different.”

That wasn’t the most damning evidence, after all, Gabriel had his duties to attend to at the time, and Eileen was more free to spend time with Sam. It’s still not the best indicator of a healthy relationship, but it’s not as bad as it could be. “That’s still not a true political marriage, though, if at least one party was emotionally committed.”

“Well,” Adam says, a little smirk coming to his lips, “if that’s the standard then I’m sure you and I are off to a great start.”

At dawn, Adam wakes Michael. “I want to show you something.”

“Before breakfast?”

Adam nods lazily. He’s a mess of contradictions, this early in the morning. He is both lethargic and energetic, both happy and anxious. It is painted across his face like a puzzle where Michael hasn’t yet figured out where the meaning lies once the different features are combined. “It’s better we go before everyone else is up and moving.”

Adam leads him out of the house, through the gardens, all the way to the edge of the estate proper. Adam is silent as he leads him, though he keeps a tight hold on Michael’s hand. They stop in a small garden, filled not with vegetables or anything similarly productive, but simply with petunias and violets and other flowers. There is a little clearing of grass, in the midst of the flowers, and Adam sits down on the grass. Michael follows.

Adam bites his lip. There is a sad look in his eyes, and Michael wonders what he’s done to upset him. But then Adam is blinking the tears away, and when he turns back to Michael he has a smile carefully painted on his face. “This is where my mother is buried,” Adam says. “Lord Winchester chose the spot. Out of sight, out of mind, right?”

“Adam, why would John--”

“I’m his bastard,” Adam blurts out, before Michael can even finish his question. He looks Michael in the eye, and Michael doesn’t know what to say. Adam must hear a million questions in Michael’s silence. “I didn’t know how to tell you, or even if I should, really, but now it’s kind of unavoidable that you’d find out, so…”

Michael can understand, or at least think of, reasons why Adam would hesitate to tell him. It is something personal, in the same way that Michael’s omega father is deeply personal. And yet at the same time it is basic information, something that Michael could’ve,  _ should’ve _ known. Adam is tall, for an omega male, but that’s no surprise when both Dean and Sam are taller than average. Adam even looks like Dean, too, if you tilt your head and squint right; his features are more delicate, and his eyes are blue instead of green, but it’s there. Of course Adam would always feel awkward in the Winchesters’ home, of course he would always be in conflict with his legitimate brothers. Of course Adam’s only request of Michael would be to change the law to make it so that someone in Adam’s own position wouldn’t be illegitimate. It makes perfect sense, in a million little ways. Michael wonders how he didn’t see it sooner.

“Why did you think you shouldn’t tell me?”

Adam bites his lip once more, and his grip on Michael’s hand tightens. “I know what people think about half-nobles. Always trying to be something they’re not, always trying to aim for something more than they deserve. And I didn’t want to make it seem like I was using my father to try and claim that I’m better than I am. In every meaningful way, I was raised a commoner, not a noble. I don’t understand noble social codes, I don’t know about history and religion; hell, I can’t even read or write, Michael. All I know is what my mother taught me, and she taught me honesty and a little commonfolk medicine. That’s it. That’s what I am.

“And part of it-- I guess I’ve just had this anxiety, since you’ve come back. Because I agreed to this, but I’m just worried that I’m not going to live up to the role that’s set for me. Because I can fill the biological role no problem. But the social role, of the perfect omega husband who knows how to act in all the noble social circles? I’ve got no clue. I’m not  _ pure, _ not like all these nobles are. And I don’t know how I’m going to live up to their expectations.”

As much as Michael’s experiences growing up differ so much from Adam’s, Michael can feel his own anxiety reflected back in Adam’s words. They are two different outcomes to the same dilemma. “I’m only half, too, Adam.”

“What?” Adam looks at him in confusion, and Michael is almost surprised that Adam doesn’t know. Sure, Michael hadn’t  _ told _ him, but Michael is used to everyone knowing. Among the palace servants and Father’s advisors, it had always been common knowledge; among the nobles, it was frequent gossip. It is so  _ new _ to Michael to have to explain this. It is also, in a way, unbearably difficult. 

“My omega father, he was born into a farming village. Not even on a noble estate, just with other commonfolk. And one day, my alpha Father was doing a patrol through the village while on his military duties. He decided to stay for a few days at the local inn, and while he was there, they met. I’m not even sure they ever really  _ liked _ each other, but they were certainly attracted to each other. My alpha Father left the village after a few days, and everything would’ve been forgotten if I hadn’t been born.”

“Oh,” Adam says, quiet. “So your omega father, he had to leave his village so that you could be raised as a prince?”

Michael nods. “One of the other generals was passing through the village a few months into the pregnancy and heard the stories about the omega boy with the crown prince’s child. Reported back to my grandfather, and a few weeks later my omega father was brought to the palace. Claimed, married, everything. And it… It would’ve been bad enough, if that’d been the end of it all.” This isn’t how he’d wanted to tell Adam about the danger he would face, about why Lucifer would surely try to hurt him, but they are at this point in the story already. Best to keep going.

“What happened?”

“When I was conceived, Father--my alpha Father--was already engaged to a noble woman. A pretty little blonde, the image of the fairytale princess. Father was infatuated with her. And then I came along, and my existence ruined their little fairytale. But they were still married, of course, a few months after I was born, and they had my brother.”

“Lucifer.”

Michael nods. “Then my sister was born, a little after that, and it seemed like our messed up little family was complete. Grandfather passed away, and Father was made king. He made Lucifer’s mother Queen, as expected.”

“And then Gabriel came along?”

“Yes. Once again, Father managed to find someone to fall into bed with. Another commoner. Mother Rowena, you’ll get to know her quite well.”

“Is she nice?”

“Depends on your definition. She’s… She means well, but she’s not always the most honest about her means.” Michael swallows. Best to get back to the story. “Anyway, a month before Gabriel was born, the Queen was found dead. Poisoned.”

“Do they know who did it?”

Michael feels his heart beating loudly in his chest, and he feels the urge to look away, as if to hide himself from Adam’s gaze. This is Michael’s one secret, as much as it is public record. It is what defines him, in Father’s eyes and in their kingdom’s eyes. It is why Michael never thought he would be allowed a happy ending. “It was… It was my omega father. He was a healer, in his village, and the poison used was one he would’ve known how to make. So he was executed for it.”

Adam is quiet for a moment, and the silence is so much harder to hear than any words could’ve been. “I’m sorry,” Adam says, once the moment has passed, “I’m sorry that all happened to you. Almost makes my life look easy.”

“Don’t discount your own suffering just because I’ve suffered too.”

“I don’t know if I can even compare the two, though. I lost my mom at seventeen, not when I was a little kid. And certainly not like that.” Adam looks at Michael as if he’s trying to comfort a wounded animal. While Michael appreciates the sentiment, he doesn’t need to be pitied. 

“It’s… I’m not upset over it, not now at least. My family has worse issues than that to deal with.”

“Lucifer?”

Michael nods. “He’s still upset over losing his mother, far more than Raphael and I were ever allowed to be upset over losing our omega father. It’s what drives him, or at least he claims it is.”

“He claims?”

“Raphael thinks he’s outgrown logical reasoning, at this point. That he’s just become a sadist for the sake of it. And I’m not sure whether I agree with her or not, but she is often correct.”

Adam takes a deep breath, and looks back at Michael. “I know you said you’re not still upset, but… Follow along with me here, alright?”

Michael’s not sure where Adam’s going with this, but he will humor him. “Alright.”

Adam looks toward the ground in front of him. The world is almost silent around him, and Michael sits patiently in the silence, simply staring at Adam’s cheeks in the morning light. He is beautiful, here and now, and part of Michael wonders if Adam will look this beautiful once he is torn away from his home and confined to the palace. Even though Michael has been absent from the palace more often than not, he remembers the way that Kelly was so radiant when she first married Lucifer, and he saw the way that the light in her eyes had slowly faded as the months had passed. Michael doesn’t want to watch that happen to Adam. Adam is so young, so bright, so caring. And even if Adam doesn’t  _ die _ for Michael, he may still give so much that he will no longer be the Adam that sits in front of Michael now.

“When I come here, I like to talk out loud to my mom,” Adam says. “No one else is ever around to overhear, so… I’m going to say goodbye. Since I probably won’t be back here again.”

“Go ahead.”

“Hey, Mom,” Adam says, looking down at the grass in front of him. “This is Michael, my… My husband. He’s going to take me to the capital with him, so I came to say goodbye.” Michael squeezes Adam’s hand, feeling the tremble that runs through the omega’s fingers. Adam still continues to shake, and so Michael lets go of Adam’s hand to pull Adam closer to his side. Adam rests his head on Michael’s shoulder, fitting perfectly at his side. “I’m going to miss you a lot, but I know that you wouldn’t want me to be unhappy, or to hold myself back because I don’t want to leave you behind. You’ll always be here, but you’ll always be with me, too. And I’m-- I’m going to make you proud.”

Adam turns his face toward Michael, burying himself in Michael’s embrace. Even if this is only because Michael is the closest person, or because of their newly-formed bond, or even just Adam pretending they are in love until they really are, Michael is glad that Adam feels like he can lean on Michael. He tightens his grip on Adam, and he leans down to press a kiss to Adam’s hair.

“She’s already so proud of you.”

The walk back to the house for breakfast is possibly the most anxiety-filled walk of Michael’s life. When he first heard that Adam was John’s son, he wasn’t particularly concerned. But now, walking toward the house with the knowledge that he will have to look John in the eye and admit that he has  _ claimed _ John’s son without so much as telling him beforehand, well, it’s going to be awkward.

“This is why you wanted to leave as soon as possible, isn’t it?”

“Yup,” Adam replies, squeezing Michael’s fingers in what Michael hopes is support. “Not excited to watch you get into an argument with all my least favorite family members.”

“Only your least favorite ones?”

“Yeah. It’s not like Gabriel and Eileen are going to argue with you. Which leaves the alpha-angst enthusiasts.”

“The alpha-angst enthusiasts? You call them that?”

Adam shrugs, which is difficult given that he’s still holding hands with Michael. “It’s accurate.”

Michael can’t deny that. Most alphas are emotionally repressed to some extent, Michael included, but Dean Winchester makes it a sport. It’s honestly worrying, and that’s for someone who could, perhaps, be called a childhood friend. He imagines it’s much worse having to live with him. And while Michael has never been directly exposed to Sam’s angst, he imagines Dean rubs off on people. “At least Anna will be there to restrain them somewhat.”

“Oh, she is totally part of the alpha-angst enthusiasts. She’s just as vague and overdramatic as the rest of them are.”

Michael blinks. Anna is one of the most down-to-Earth alphas he knows, possibly only being beaten out by Raphael. If she qualifies, then just about anyone would. “So you called yourself the master of honesty, correct?”

“I did, yes.”

Michael hesitates, then lets a little grin come to his lips. If Adam finds it so amusing to tease Michael, then Michael can at least tease him in return. “Do I qualify as part of the alpha-angst enthusiasts?”

Adam looks at him, bites his lip, and Michael already knows the answer. “No comment,” Adam says, his grin equally prominent.

“You turn on your own husband that easily?”

“What can I say? If the shoe fits, wear it.”

When they return to the house, Michael pushes down the remnants of his anxiety. Adam will no doubt have it worse than he will, and Michael is good at nothing if not repressing his emotions for the sake of others. Michael will take whatever blame John wishes to lay at his feet. It’s better than the blame being layed on Adam.

The family are already assembled at breakfast, sans Anna and Ruby, when Michael and Adam arrive. Michael takes a seat, leaving one open between himself and Gabriel for Adam, and hopes in vain that John will simply not mention it.

“Adam, what do you think you’re doing?”

No such luck.

Before Adam can answer and make things worse, Michael decides that  _ he _ will make things worse. “He’s my husband. Is a  _ prince _ not allowed to sit at your table, John?”

“He’s your what?”

Michael looks over at Adam, who’s hiding his face. Michael brings his hand up to the button on Adam’s collar, and pauses for a second in a silent question. Adam nods his head, almost imperceptibly, and Michael undoes the button. Adam stills Michael’s hand before Michael can pull at the fabric. He does it himself, pulling his collar to the side to reveal the claiming mark. “My husband,” Michael repeats.

“He’s my son!”

“I’m aware.”

“And you didn’t think to  _ ask _ my permission before you--”

“Would you have denied me that permission?” Michael raises an eyebrow. “You barely have authority over him, as it is. Biology has little influence on legal authority if you don’t recognize him as yours.”

“He’s still my son.”

“And you should be proud of him.”

John seems to be too flabbergasted to argue, so Sam takes up the argument in his stead. Great. “So what, you walk in here and just claim our brother overnight?”

“It’s not as if they don’t know each other,” Gabriel says, rolling his eyes at his own husband. “They were all over each other weeks ago.”

It’s Dean’s turn to feign protectiveness. He crosses his arms over his chest, raising an eyebrow at Michael. “You did what to him, now?”

“I didn’t touch him until I intended to marry him, Dean, I wouldn’t abandon someone like that.” Unlike Dean himself, of course. Dean, unfortunately, doesn’t have the awareness to look ashamed at Michael’s implication, and Castiel is too devoted to blame him for anything. “In any case, we’ll be out of your hair in only a few hours. We’re returning to the capital this afternoon.”

“You’re just taking him and going?” Sam asks.

“Yes.”

“You can’t just--”

“Sam,” Gabriel cuts in, “don’t try to argue this. You will lose, and you will be on the wrong side.”

“What do you mean?”

“The succession issue, Sam?”

If it’s possible, Sam’s gaze darkens further. “So what, you’ve married him just so you can have an heir? My little brother?”

“It’s not like I didn’t  _ agree _ to this,” Adam says, finally looking up. “Will you all please stop arguing over my decisions?”

“You’re still a kid, Adam.”

“I’m nineteen. I understand what’s going on, and I agreed to this. End of story. It’s not like you can talk me out of something I’ve already committed to.”

Adam stares at Sam; Sam stares back at Adam. Michael worries that Sam is going to make the unfortunate choice to continue arguing despite his own husband’s warning not to. Fortunately for them all, Castiel decides, finally, to speak up.

“Can we please just eat?”

After the world’s most awkward breakfast is over, Michael accompanies Adam to collect his things. Adam offers to go alone--“You should spend more time with Gabriel, before we go”--but Michael refuses. Newly formed bonds have a tendency to make people clingy, and, contrary to popular belief, the alphas are often affected worse than the omegas. Michael isn’t leaving Adam’s side for the next week, come hell or high water.

The servants’ quarters are spread between the basement and the attic. The basement, Adam explains to Michael, is for single alphas and betas, while the attic is for families and omegas. And so Michael, who has never set foot in the servants’ quarters of any house before in his life, is lead through the maze of rooms on the third floor that eventually lead to a spiral staircase up to the attic.

The difference between the main house and the attic is immediately recognizable. There is not a wall in the lower floors of the house that is not carefully wallpapered in a bright color; the attic’s walls are plain, old wood. The decorations that line the halls of the lower floors--painting, vases, statues, other trinkets which have come into the Winchesters’ possession over the past centuries--are notably absent. There is a quietness about the attic too, as if the world is a little more peaceful in the attic. This illusion of peace is shattered, after a moment, when Michael’s ears adjust and he hears the buzz of children playing behind the closed doors, but it lingers for just a moment before then.

“My room’s at the end of the hall,” Adam says, pulling Michael along. “I used to share it with my mom, and they didn’t bother trying to move me.”

Adam’s room is small, with only a window, a bed, and a small chest occupying the space. The bed is no grand bed, either, it is little more than a cot upon the floor. Somewhere in his mind, Michael had known that the commonfolk lived like this, but he doesn’t associate cots with normal life. He associates them with soldiers and the wounded--with people in crisis. Perhaps unfairly, a part of Michael says that Adam has no business living in a place like this, that even the diluted noble blood in his veins entitled him to live more humanely than his peers. And Michael knows that Adam would not appreciate that train of thought, but it is still what comes to Michael’s mind.

Worse than that, though, are the next thoughts that come to Michael as Adam goes around the little room, pulling items from the chest and beneath the mattress. There is a part of Michael that sees Adam, with as much noble blood as Michael has royal blood, and Michael cannot help but imagine himself in Adam’s place. He imagines himself in a room much like this one, alone in a little cottage with his omega father. Michael would’ve grown up with nothing, materially, but his omega father wouldn’t have died. Lucifer’s mother wouldn’t have died. Michael would’ve been nothing, not a prince or a martyr-to-be, only a peasant living off the land. And part of Michael longs for that life never lived. He longs for the peaceful life without hard questions, for the life where no one has to die for Michael. Perhaps he even could’ve met Adam, on some one-in-a-million coincidence, and they could’ve married and lived together and tilled the commons. Michael’s omega father would’ve been proud of him, to have made the most of a life destined for little. Raphael would never have been born, but at least Michael would not live with the knowledge that one day, sooner or later, one of them will have to mourn the other. Michael could live with it, and perhaps he even would’ve been happy.

“You’re thinking about something.”

Michael shakes his head, bringing himself back to reality. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Tell me,” Adam says. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, rolling his clothes around the other belongings so that they will be protected when he tucks them into his bag. “Even if you think it’s dumb.”

“I was just… Thinking about another world. A life that could’ve been.”

“What kind of life?”

“A life where I didn’t have a murderous brother to deal with, for starters.”

Adam laughs, but there is a bitter edge beneath it. “Seems like something worth imagining.”

“I was thinking about us, in that life. About what we could’ve been, in a life where I wasn’t a prince. Would you have still married me, if I was only a farmer?”

Adam hesitates for a moment, but then he says, “Yeah. I think I would. I mean, jury’s still out on whether we’re actually  _ destined _ or any of that, but I like you well enough.”

Michael can’t help but laugh. When he returns to himself, he continues, “I was thinking about this other life, and I was thinking about how no one had to die for me, in that life. That what happened with my omega father would have happened, that Raphael would not exist to live in harm’s way, that I wouldn’t be putting you in danger by marrying you. And I guess-- It’s almost painful to imagine, because it brings the world we actually live in into starker contrast. Dreaming of a better world exposes all the faults of our own.”

Adam is silent for a moment, and then he stands, slinging his bag over his shoulder. “Michael,” he says, as he crosses to stand before him, “I don’t fault you for putting me at risk, or anything like that.  _ We _ are doing what’s right, and you’re not at fault if that gets one or both of us hurt. You know that, don’t you?”

“I…” Michael can’t answer him. Because he wants to say yes, he wants to agree with Adam and separate the blame from himself. But this  _ is _ his fault, everything that’s messed up in his generation of his family is his fault. Lucifer is without a mother because of Michael; Raphael is without an omega father because of Michael; Lucifer is only the way he is because he wants to  _ hurt _ Michael and those Michael loves. It  _ is _ Michael’s fault, and his rationality will not allow him to honestly agree with Adam’s assessment.

“Don’t blame yourself, Michael. No matter what happens, I don’t blame you.”

“Send Raphael and Mother Rowena my well wishes.”

“I will,” Michael says, nodding at his youngest brother. Gabriel is the only one who has come to see them off. “They’ll want you to visit, at some point.”

“Tough.”

“Everyone misses you,” Michael says, although he can see from the look on Gabriel’s face that nothing he says will persuade the younger prince. “Raphael especially.”

“I know. But, to put it plainly, I’d rather swim ten miles through a swamp than set foot in that palace again, at least while Lucifer’s still enforcing his reign of terror.”

Michael furrows his eyebrows. “He’s not  _ that _ bad, brother.”

“Sure.”

There is something more behind Gabriel’s words, but Michael knows better than to try to interrogate it out of him. When Gabriel wishes to hide something, he hides it well. So instead, Michael pushes it out of his mind, and he smiles back at his brother. “Well, I’ve no doubt we’ll see you again at some point, even if it is us that come to visit you.”

Gabriel looks over at Adam, who had already mounted his horse. “Somehow, I have a feeling you two won’t be coming back here for a  _ long _ time.”


	4. Gabriel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we finally get to see Sam and Gabriel's relationship from an insider's perspective, as well as some answers as to what the hell was actually going on in the first chapter. Next week we'll have an Adam chapter and another awkward meet the family meal.
> 
> Slight warnings for past violence, nothing too graphic.

Gabriel didn’t like going to chapel, as a child. It would’ve been bearable, if they were allowed to merely sit among the congregation, but their blood did not allow that. The monarch is the human embodiment of the divine, and their children share in that divinity. And that means, before any of them are old enough to truly comprehend scripture, they must read it aloud in a language they do not speak.

Each year, on the anniversary of Lucifer’s mother’s death, Father had Raphael read. Before Raphael had been old enough to read, it had been Michael, but Father had transferred the duty to her as soon as she was capable of fulfilling it. Father may have called it an honor, but he wasn’t fooling Raphael, and he certainly wasn’t fooling Gabriel. Raphael was  _ terrified, _ each time that she stepped up to the pulpit on the anniversary. And it was for good reason.

As Raphael read from scripture, each year the same text, Lucifer glared at her from his place in the first pew. Gabriel, who sat beside him, couldn’t avoid the anger and mistrust and disgust that radiated from him. Raphael would look up, every few lines, and she would meet eyes with Lucifer. She would blink, and her voice would crack, and she would look back down at the text as quickly as she could. She knew what was coming, once worship was over.

As soon as they returned back to their rooms, each year without fail, Father would call Michael away to speak with him. Michael would not be gone for more than an hour, but that was more than enough time for Lucifer to take out his anger. 

Gabriel would sit against the wall, head down, as Lucifer would begin to taunt her.  _ You killed her, Raphael, she’s dead because of you and your precious big brother. You dare to stand up at the altar and pray for her soul? Well, it’s not like you can pray for your dad’s soul, we all know he’s rotting in hell.  _ In the early years, Raphael would fight back, she would tell him that she was only a baby, she would tell him that she wished his mother were still alive, she would try to cling to Lucifer the same way that she always clung to Michael, and each time Lucifer would only raise his voice and push her away. He would push her down to the ground, he would kick her and hold her arms behind her back until she was screaming. 

The guards never intervened, even though they must’ve heard it. Father condoned this. It was why he always chose Raphael to read, it was why he pulled Michael away, it was why he never chastised Lucifer for the bruises that haunted Raphael’s skin for weeks after. He didn’t tell Lucifer to hurt Raphael. He didn’t need to tell him.

Eventually, Raphael stopped fighting back.

Eventually, Gabriel found the first alpha who looked his way and he told everyone that he was in love and he married him just to escape Raphael’s screams.

Some nights, he still hears her.

“Gabriel? Is everything alright?”

Sam’s hand clamps on Gabriel’s shoulder, shaking him awake, and Gabriel knows that it’s happened again. He rolls over onto his back, meeting Sam’s eyes, and he nods. “Fine,” he murmurs. “Go back to sleep.”

“You were screaming,” Sam says. “I heard you all the way from Eileen’s room.”

“Just a nightmare, Sam.” Gabriel’s just glad Michael left yesterday. He doesn’t want him to know about the nightmares. That would require explanations of things that Michael doesn’t know, of things that Raphael doesn’t want Michael to know. Gabriel’s a lot of things, but a snitch isn’t one of them. “I’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. You should go be with Eileen, don’t worry.”

Sam’s hand lifts from Gabriel’s shoulder, and for a moment, Gabriel thinks Sam will leave it there. Instead, Gabriel feels the mattress sink, and he feels Sam wrap an arm across his stomach. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You shouldn’t waste your time on me, Sam.”

“I’m not  _ wasting _ my time. I care about you, is that--”

“I don’t  _ need _ you to be here. I’ll be fine.”

“And if I want to be here?”

Gabriel doesn’t know what to say to that. Sam is a smart person, Gabriel wouldn’t have married him if he wasn’t, but he’s much more emotional than Gabriel has ever felt comfortable being. He’s sentimental, he likes to talk things out and try to make things better. Gabriel’s not that type of person, he’s not the type who can just talk about something and pretend it makes it any better. There’s talk, and then there’s action, and Gabriel will always prefer action. Unfortunately, Sam’s strength lies in talking.

“Listen, I know it’s hard for you, with Eileen being pregnant. But it doesn’t mean you have to push me away entirely, alright? I’m her husband, but I’m your husband too. If you need me, then I’ll be here. Same as I would be for her.”

Lovely words. They’d mean a lot more if Ruby wasn’t sleeping down the hall. “Sam,” Gabriel says, as he tries to figure out what to say. It’s not like he can talk to Sam about the nightmares, and Sam wouldn’t be willing to discuss the Ruby situation. Gabriel doesn’t like talking about Eileen when she isn’t around--Gabriel and Eileen are a team, they deal with their issues together and not through Sam--which really leaves Gabriel with exactly zero topics to talk to Sam about. Great.

“Gabriel, I--” Sam takes a deep breath, which means that he’s about to go on an even longer tangent. Lovely. “I know that this--us--was originally just a way for you to get away from your family. And I was, still am, happy to help with that. But I also really care about you, and it’s hard, sometimes, when it feels like we’re barely even married. I’m your husband, but sometimes… Sometimes it feels like I’m nothing to you. Like you don’t trust me.”

“Sam--”

“I still stand by everything we agreed to. If you don’t want kids, we don’t have to have them. No interfering in each other’s sexual lives, no pressuring each other into being something we’re not. But those are rules that we put up so that we could trust each other, not so that we could live without trust. Do you… Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

Gabriel does understand, but that doesn’t make things any easier. You’d think, four years into their marriage, that they would’ve sorted out by now how they feel. But they had made their agreement with each other, back in the days when Gabriel would cling to Sam’s side and smile like he was in love and drop it as soon as they were alone. That agreement was supposed to work in both of their favors. After all, it’s not as if Gabriel doesn’t have his fun with female alphas and with other omegas and with, well, everyone he happens to take a liking to for an evening. With Sam’s claim on him, his fun could be had without consequence. Gabriel could escape his family, Sam could claim to have wed a prince, and neither would have to sacrifice their desires. It was supposed to be the perfect agreement, and four years ago, it seemed like it was.

And it’s not as if Gabriel doesn’t care, and it’s not as if he doesn’t know that Sam cares. Gabriel knows perfectly well that his love--not love, this isn’t love--is requited, but there’s still the agreement, hovering between them and making everything more difficult. When you start tearing down clauses, how do you keep it all from falling apart? Gabriel isn’t ready for the kind of vulnerability that comes from total honesty and traditional marriage. He isn’t ready to lose what he’s gained and watch Sam retain the same privileges that Gabriel would no doubt give up. It hurts less to think about Sam with someone else--not Eileen, Gabriel trusts Eileen--when Gabriel himself can fall in bed with anyone he likes. Take that ability away, and Gabriel is the same nothing as every other omega.

“I understand,” Gabriel says. “But I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”

Sam looks like he wants to say something, but he just nods. He presses his face to Gabriel’s neck, and Gabriel shudders as Sam presses a kiss to his pulse, only inches from his claiming mark. “Can you at least tell me what you were dreaming about?” Sam asks, quieter now.

Gabriel hesitates, but he thinks he can be vague enough not to say anything he shouldn’t. “Memories, from when I was a kid. When Lucifer got angry, he would always take it out on Raphael. He’d make me watch.”

“He didn’t-- He didn’t hurt you, though, did he?”

“He wasn’t angry at me.” It’s not a real answer, nor an honest one, but he doesn’t want Sam to worry over things that have passed. Sure, when Lucifer’s directed anger morphed into undirected sadism he’d taken it out on Gabriel as well, but Gabriel is out of there, now. He’s safe. Raphael isn’t.

“So it wasn’t about your last trip?”

It probably should’ve been. It wasn’t. “No.”

“You never… You never told me what actually happened, then.”

And there’s another secret Gabriel’s not keen on sharing. He hadn’t even told Michael about it in any detail. “I found someone from my mother’s family that I thought could help with some of the problems from my father’s side. Turns out we had very different ideas of what helping entailed. Michael came and got me, happy endings all around, end of story.”

“And this… You were tied up in a basement, because of some differences of opinion?”

“Michael told you?”

“Yeah. Practically interrogated me about making sure you’re safe.”

That sounds like Michael. Completely unable to see half the problems in front of his eyes but also wildly overprotective about the problems that do manage to filter through. “Well, Michael has a tendency to exaggerate. He’s a bit overprotective.”

“So you’re saying you  _ weren’t _ tied up in a basement?”

“I’m saying that I would’ve gotten out on my own eventually.” There wasn’t any threat to his life, in any case. “I wasn’t in any real danger, regardless of what my brother believes.”

“Gabriel--”

“I’m fine, Sam. That’s all that matters.”

Sam seems hesitant to leave it there, but eventually he calms, pressing closer to Gabriel’s side. “Promise you won’t put yourself in danger again?”

“I’ll try not to.”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

Gabriel turns his head, careful not to knock into Sam. He looks down at his husband, at the genuine concern in his eyes, and though Gabriel doesn’t know how he can be honest with out making Sam worry, he doesn’t know how he can lie to Sam either. So instead, he chooses not to say anything at all. He presses his fingers to Sam’s cheek and tilts his head up, guiding Sam’s lips to his own. They are rarely intimate, but Gabriel knows Sam desires him. This will distract him long enough that he won’t question Gabriel further. And if Gabriel wants this as much as Sam does, if he wants to bury himself in this quiet, simple affection-- Well, that’s no one’s business but Gabriel’s.

And Sam’s, but. Gabriel’s not always the best at telling him the full truth.

The first time Gabriel met Sam was when they were nineteen. Sam was nearly a year older than Gabriel, but their first meeting fell in that span of time after Gabriel’s birthday and before Sam’s. Michael had gone to the Winchester estate to visit Dean and, following a not insignificant amount of pleading from Gabriel, had taken Raphael and Gabriel along. Raphael, predictably, had spent the whole trip searching the Winchesters’ library for books that would fit into her collection. At least it got her out of the path of Lucifer’s wrath for a week.

Sam was tall. That was Gabriel’s first impression of him. His first thought, likewise, was  _ I’m going to climb him like a tree. _ And Gabriel certainly wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass him by. Within 36 hours, Gabriel had managed to worm his way into Sam’s bed, and within 108 hours, he’d made the executive decision that he was going to spill his lifestory to this man in the hopes that he would take pity on him and get him out of that fucking house.

“I want to marry you.”

“What?”

Okay, so maybe Gabriel should’ve started with the backstory instead of the big show-opener, but he’s always been one for dramatics and also one for cutting straight to the point. Probably a consequence of living with enough drama to fill an opera house while also being one of the only sane people in the family. “I want to get away from my family, you want to be something more than the second son that gets walked on by his big brother. Mutually beneficial arrangement, Sam.”

Sam had hesitated, a look on his face that immediately curdled Gabriel’s stomach, before he explained his non-problem. “I’m already engaged, though.”

“Okay, and you’re an alpha. Marry both of us.”

A month later, Gabriel had met Eileen--he loved her from the first moment he met her, she just had that spark to her--and a month after that, Sam had come to visit the palace and get formal permission from Father. Father, because he loved his drama as much as the rest of them, had made Sam sit through five days of formal meals and conversations that felt more like interviews before he’d finally signed off on the marriage. Gabriel certainly had to give Sam points for determination.

Noble engagements were long, drawn-out processes. Even after getting permission from both their families, it had taken another seven months to plan the wedding. Guest lists, flowers, fancy meals, blessings. It was exhausting. Gabriel had no idea how Sam was going to do this twice in the space of five months. Then again, it’s not like Gabriel had any real support from his family in arranging anything. Mother Rowena had never had the fancy ceremony, being born a commoner, and so her main contributions had been giving Gabriel advice he did not want or need. (She flirted with Sam during the reception. Gabriel had never wanted more to bury himself in the cheesecake on his plate.) Father was busy reminiscing about his own, singular wedding, and Michael and Lucifer were equally unhelpful on principle alone. Which meant, of course, that the only sibling anywhere in the realm of helpful had been Raphael.

A month before the wedding, after he and Sam had hammered out the details of their agreement, Gabriel had come to a conclusion. It was a conclusion that, lacking Sam himself being there to tell, he could only trust to Raphael. So he’d gone to Raphael’s room, sat barefoot on her duvet, and waited for her to return.

She’d raised an eyebrow when she saw him, but hadn’t said anything until she settled down on the bed next to him. “What is it?” she asked, quietly, in the way they only talk to each other when they know there’s something wrong.

“I’m not ready,” Gabriel said, looking over at her. Raphael rarely showed much of any emotion, anymore, even in the privacy of her own room. Even with him. “It’s dumb, right, because the only thing that’ll be different is living together, but-- I’m ready to be married. I’m just not ready to have children.”

“You’re scared you’ll fail them.”

“I mean, with blood like ours, it’s kind of inevitable, isn’t it?”

Raphael had stared at him for a long time. Gabriel was almost ready to change the subject or even just leave the room altogether, when Raphael had reached up to brush a strand of hair from his face. “Not with blood like yours, little brother. You’re the most pure one out of all of us.”

Raphael would never admit it, and Gabriel would never tell a soul, but Raphael had cried the night before Gabriel’s wedding. Raphael loved Michael best out of their siblings, everyone knew that to be true, but Raphael trusted Gabriel more than she trusted Michael. Michael was always in danger; Michael could get himself killed if he tried to defend her from Lucifer. So Raphael didn’t run to Michael when Lucifer hurt her, she ran to Gabriel. She would tell him what had happened, and he would sit by her side until she felt well enough to sleep on her own, and she would do her best to repress the memories while Gabriel was cursed to remember them all. So Raphael cried on the night before Gabriel’s wedding, and she hadn’t said anything, and Gabriel hadn’t needed any words to understand.

Her real wedding gift to him, rather than the poodle she’d gifted in public, was a little bag of mixed herbs that she’d found the recipe for and prepared after he’d confessed his reservations to her. “It’s not a certain thing, so don’t rely on it. But it will reduce your chances of conceiving, if you’re truly wary of it.”

Gabriel took it religiously, over the first few months of his marriage, and Sam never once objected.

“As long as you don’t d0 anything stupid like name the kid after Dean or anything like that, I think you’ll be fine.”

“Don’t give him any ideas,” Eileen says. “Sam  _ would _ do that.”

“No, I wouldn’t!” Sam says, looking up from the book he’s reading. “My children are not getting named after their living relatives.”

Gabriel raises an eyebrow. “Not even if Dean tried to bribe you?”

“Bribe me?”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t put it past him.”

Sam furrows his eyebrows, as if saying  _ Dean wouldn’t. Probably,  _ before he looks back down at his book.

“Anyway,” Gabriel says as he turns back to Eileen, “we need to find an actual name for our little one.”

“Sarah?”

“You think it’s going to be a girl?”

Eileen shrugs. “If it is a girl, Sarah is a good name.”

“Maybe Ruth?”

They’d started the search for names a few months before, but nothing ever seemed to stick. Gabriel had initially left the task to Sam and Eileen to sort out--it is  _ their _ kid, after all--but when it had become clear that Sam didn’t have any good ideas and Eileen didn’t want to pick on her own, Gabriel had been brought into the fray. He’s not sure he’s been that much help, but he’s trying. They don’t have much time left, anyway, so it’ll probably be left to Eileen to decide sooner or later.

“Peter, for a boy?”

“Could work. Or Thomas.”

Eventually, Sam gets called away to go speak with John, and Gabriel and Eileen are left to their own devices. Since the incident with Michael and Adam--longer, really--Gabriel has been thinking about the things that he and Eileen should talk about. If even  _ Michael _ can have a happy, healthy relationship, it’s probably time that Gabriel sorts out his own. And while he ultimately needs to talk with Sam and be more honest with him than Gabriel is normally comfortable with, he knows that he needs to talk with Eileen first. Any decision he and Sam make will ultimately impact her, too.

“So, I was thinking.”

“Rare.”

Gabriel frowns. “Hey, I’m not that bad.”

Eileen laughs and gestures for him to continue.

“So you remember the agreement Sam and I made before we got married?” Eileen nods. “I’ve been thinking about trying to make some changes to it, but I want your opinion first.”

“Tell me.”

Here comes the hard part. Not necessarily because he thinks that Eileen will disagree or argue with him, but simply because he will have to admit that he was wrong. “I know you had to give up having Sam all to yourself, so that he could marry me--”

“I  _ agreed _ to share him with you.”

“With me, sure. But not to let him sleep with other people, beyond just the two of us. That was part of  _ my _ agreement with him, and you’ve had to deal with that. And I think we can both admit that I was wrong to make that portion of the deal.” It’s not even that Sam’s other lovers, Ruby first among them, are particularly bad. It’s more that the idea of their existence is troubling, that Sam could find someone else--an  _ unmarried _ someone else--and bring that fourth person into their already full marriage. Gabriel and Eileen trust each other, and to some degree they even trust Ruby and Jessica and the other married girls that Sam gets on with. They just don’t trust the idea of someone new.

“A bit, yeah.”

Kind of her to put it that way. “Well, I want to end that part of the deal. I give up outside lovers, and so does he. Just the three of us, from now on.”

“Sounds nice,” Eileen says. “So you’re… You’re ready to be a family?”

“Aren’t we already a family?”

Eileen sighs. “You know what I mean.”

Gabriel does know what she means. He knows the way that Sam always tries to talk to Gabriel and never gets answers, he knows the way that Eileen worries over him, he knows the way that he pushed himself away from them and their baby, as if this were only a marriage of convenience. But it isn’t. It hasn’t been for a long time, now. And for Eileen’s sake, as much as Sam or Gabriel’s, it’s time that that fact is recognized.

Gabriel hadn’t learned about the existence of his half-brother until he was sixteen, and Mother Rowena had sworn him to secrecy before she told him. His name was Fergus, he was half a decade older than Gabriel, and Rowena hadn’t seen him since before Gabriel was born. He was a beta half-noble, but hadn’t had the luck Gabriel had of being raised in his father’s home. Beyond that, Rowena knew almost nothing of him.

Since he found out, Gabriel had always used his travels as an excuse to dig up any information he could find. Sam’s claim on Gabriel had made traveling alone safer and likewise had made the search easier. That hadn’t meant it was  _ easy, _ by any stretch of the imagination. Gabriel’s only real lead had come six months earlier, near the beginning of Eileen’s pregnancy.

Gabriel had met a woman at an inn who’d said she’d heard of a Fergus MacLeod, though he no longer went by that name.  _ Crowley, _ he called himself, and he was the leader of a network of bandits. The types of people that Michael was sent on missions to kill. The types that weren’t focused on honest work, but instead upon robbing people of the fruits of their labor.  _ That _ was what Gabriel’s half-brother had become. And while Gabriel’s initial hopes of meeting a nice, plain brother had died on that day, a new hope was born within Gabriel: a man with that kind of power can solve problems, if he throws his weight in the right direction.

Meg, as she’d introduced herself, told Gabriel that she could get him a meeting with Crowley, if he truly wanted one. Gabriel had agreed, but he’d told her to let him arrange the details himself. He didn’t want to walk into something he was unprepared for.

Fast forward a few months, and Gabriel had finally gotten a letter detailing the time and place. Unfortunately, the letter’s arrival coincided with Michael’s visit. Gabriel found a reason to make the trip anyway, and had set off.

Crowley, despite not being much older than Michael, seemed beyond his years. He seemed exasperated more than he was tired, but there was a certain gleam in his eyes as Gabriel had entered the drawing room of the abandoned estate. He had some of his men around the edges of the room, and Gabriel would’ve regretted going alone if he didn’t know the penalty for killing royalty. Crowley was much too clever to kill Gabriel for nothing, and Gabriel was much too clever to let himself be killed. 

“Here to make a deal, your highness?” Crowley had asked, a hint of humor in his voice. He’d poured out a glass of whiskey for Gabriel, and Gabriel had taken it. It was no more potent than the stuff he normally drank, but he was careful to sip at his drink slowly in any case.

“I take it you’ve heard about the succession issues,” Gabriel said, hoping that he would be correct.

“Somewhat, yes.”

“So you know that my brother Lucifer is most likely to take the throne when my Father dies.”

Crowley bit back a smile. “I’ve heard.”

“And you know that our mother would be in danger, if that happened.”

Crowley narrowed his eyes and swallowed down the words that seemed to be rising within his throat. “Hope the bitch dies,” Crowley had said, when he finally decided upon which reaction to take.

“So you don’t care about her wellbeing?”

“Not particularly.”

“Guess I should’ve expected that,” Gabriel had said, knowing his words would rile Crowley up. “Bandits, right? Not like your noble profession to care much about the lives of the innocent.”

“Who ever said we go after the innocent?”

“You rob people. Isn’t that innocent enough?”

Crowley laughed, a laughter that seemed to fill up the room at the same time that it had chilled Gabriel to his bones. “We rob nobles, brother dear. My men make it a rule not to go after commoners. After all, you rob a farmer and you take the bread they would’ve used to survive; you rob a noble and you’re only taking what’s already been stolen.”

“Our mother was a commoner. You don’t care to save her?”

Crowley laughed once more, gesturing to the room around him. “You think Mother is so innocent? Cunningham estate, abandoned only a year before you were born. Ever wonder why?”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“This was my father’s estate,” Crowley said. “He fucked Mother and ran, and she never got over it. Killed the whole family, and then she abandoned me and found someone she could siphon more off of.”

“You’re lying.”

“Am I?”

“You were only a child when she would’ve done this, in your story. And she couldn’t have confessed it to you in the time since. So what makes more sense, that you just  _ happen to know, _ or that you’re lying?”

Crowley shrugged. “Fair reasoning, but it doesn’t mean I’m not right. Still, if you don’t want to believe me-- Well, that’s your problem.” He stood, making to leave, and Gabriel knew that he had to get his help somehow. Michael wouldn’t take the crown from Lucifer, Raphael couldn’t; it was up to Gabriel to make sure that he didn’t get into power. And Crowley was his only hope.

“If not for our mother, then for my sister.”

“For your what?” Crowley asked, turning back to him.

“My sister. Her omega father was a commoner. Lucifer will kill her, if he gets the throne. Or worse.”

“And you think I care about protecting her?”

Gabriel scrambled to find anything that he could. He had to convince Crowley to help. He had to. “What if I can make some kind of deal? You get something out of it too.”

Crowley looked around the room, as if considering it. “Deals have to be negotiated. Planned out in advance. But.”

“But?”

“I’ll do you a favor. If you play along.”

“What?”

Crowley gestured to his men, and Gabriel could barely react before there were three of them surrounding him, one pinning him down on the chair as the other two bound his hands and feet. “We use you as bait. I leave a few of my men behind. If your brother is unlucky enough to come after you, we’ll see what happens.”

“No!” Gabriel tried to squirm out of the bindings, but they held tight. These bandits were, if nothing else, good at tying knots. He doubted their skills were developed enough to go up against the trained warrior that Michael had become. “You’re going to get the wrong brother, and Michael will take out however many men you leave here.”

“Well. I guess we’ll see about that, won’t we?”

Gabriel isn’t a frequent nester. Castiel is a habitual one, Eileen an occasional one, but Gabriel rarely feels the need to pile pillows and blankets around the edge of his bed and act territorial about it. Nevertheless, as the sun sets on the evening that Gabriel had set in his mind to finally talk to Sam about everything, he finds himself enveloped within a pillow castle of his own making. That’s not a sign of anxiety at all.

Half an hour later, Sam comes to say goodnight as he usually does, and Gabriel does his best not to look like a desperate, scorned lover. He feels like one, and he also knows he has no real right to that title.

“Stay,” Gabriel says, as he sits three layers deep in blankets. Sam furrows his eyebrows, glancing between Gabriel and his creation. Nesting is one of two things: if the alpha isn’t allowed in, it’s a way for an omega to comfort themself; if the alpha is allowed in, it’s a sign of intimacy. Evidently, Gabriel’s willingness to let Sam into his nest is surprising.

“Okay,” Sam says after a moment. “I need to go say goodnight to Eileen, but I’ll be back in a second.”

Gabriel nods and allows Sam to go. He rearranges some of the pillows along the perimeter as he waits for Sam’s return. It’s common practice in noble houses to keep excesses of pillows and blankets lying around for the omegas of the house to use in their nesting, so that they don’t have to scrounge about and take their alpha’s clothes as material. Gabriel feels mildly tempted to do so anyway, or at least to convince Sam to leave one of his shirts with Gabriel in the morning. It’s not that Gabriel’s clingy--okay, maybe a bit--but it’s more on principle. Like Eileen said, they need to truly be a family, and family leave their scents in their partners’ nests. Gabriel is definitely overthinking this.

“So,” Sam says, as he shuts the door behind himself, “you want to talk?”

“What gives you that impression?”

Sam chuckles awkwardly. There’s a distinct expression of dread on his face. “Eileen told me you had some stuff you wanted to talk about.” 

“And she didn’t tell you what any of it was, either, did she?”

“Nope.”

Of course she didn’t. Which is why Sam looks like Gabriel is about to destroy all of his hopes and dreams. Gabriel pats the space on the bed next to himself. “Come on in, alpha, I don’t bite.”

“Sure about that?”

“Completely.” Gabriel even makes a show of scooting to the side to highlight the open area. “Unless you want me to. Which, maybe after we’re through with the talking part.”

Sam nods slowly, still clearly hesitant to climb in. “So, after the talking is over, we’ll still…”

“I’m trying to make things better, not worse, if that’s what you’re asking.”

That seems to finally assuage Sam’s fears enough for him to toe off his shoes and climb into bed beside Gabriel. He has to scramble over the pillow perimeter to do so, which is objectively the most amusing thing about the whole situation, but Gabriel’s just glad to finally have Sam within touching distance.

“So, what do you want to talk about?”

Gabriel takes Sam’s hand in his. “I want to talk about our agreement. And some possible amendments.”

“Go ahead.”

Gabriel takes a deep breath. “I want to strike the outside lovers clauses, for both of us. I was talking to Eileen, and I think we both agreed that we’d rather have you for ourselves. It’s only fair that I strike it on my side, too.”

Sam freezes, for a moment, and Gabriel’s mildly worried that he managed to upend Sam’s perception of reality enough for him to permanently settle into a state of confusion. Luckily, Sam eventually sputters back into awareness. “So, you want-- You’re telling me that you--”

“Actually want to act like a real relationship, yeah.”

Sam blinks, and his grip on Gabriel’s hand tightens. “I mean, I’m thrilled, but-- There’s a lot of things we still need to talk about, beyond just our agreement. I don’t want to keep secrets from each other.”

“Ask, then.”

“What happened, when you went missing?”

Well-- Gabriel does owe him enough to tell him, although he might have to swear him to secrecy. Well, what are marriages without a few bloodpact secrets? “Promise not to tell anyone?”

“Um, not even Eileen?”

“I mean, you can tell her. As long as you make her promise not to tell anyone else.”

“You know what, you tell her. So I don’t have to.” Sam rolls his eyes. “But anyway, yes. I promise.”

“Alright. Well.” Gabriel’s not really sure where to start. Mysterious half-brother, allegations of mother’s misdeeds, almost-planned assassination attempts? He settles on the last one, because it somehow manages to seem the most honest and least worrying option. “I tried to make a deal with the leader of a group of bandits to help, uh, sort out the succession issue. This was before Michael decided to actually take things into his own hands, so, I was just trying to solve it anyway I could. And things went south, and they decided the quickest solution would be to use me as bait. Luckily, Michael was more than they were prepared for. And since he’s got Adam, now, I don’t have to solve any of my siblings’ problems.”

“So you-- You tried to come up with a plan to-- To what? Kill one of your own siblings?”

Honesty time. Gabriel takes another deep breath, and hopes that Sam will accept his reasoning. “Yes. Sam, I’ve told you a fair amount about what happened with my family when I was younger. But trust me, words can’t substitute for the experience, and… Some of it’s just not my story to tell. Lucifer has hurt people, and he continues to hurt people. Raphael especially. And I’ll do whatever I have to do to protect my sister. That’s just how it is.”

“But-- Murder. You would murder your own brother?”

Sam makes it sound much more moralistic than it is. Morals are good, but they only get you so far when you’re just trying to survive. “Someone in my family is going to get killed, sooner or later. It’s either Lucifer, or it’s Michael and Raphael. And while Michael isn’t exactly my favorite sibling, I’m not going to let Raphael die. So it has to be Lucifer. One way or another.”

“One life for another?”

“A guilty life, to save an innocent one.” 

Sam looks at him for a long time, and then he looks away. Gabriel almost worries that he has broken something between them, that out of all of Gabriel’s sins this is the one Sam will fail to forgive him for. For what, for loving his family enough that he would kill one of them to save the others? Gabriel doesn’t claim to be a saint. All he wants is to stop worrying, to stop waking up in the middle of the night and wondering whether his family are in danger. He’ll never forget the screaming, but at least he would know that it wasn’t happening any longer. 

“Gabriel--”

“Listen, it doesn’t matter. Michael’s probably going to get the throne through perfectly legitimate means, now, so you don’t have to worry about me trying to assassinate my brother, alright? Just forget I ever told you, if that makes you feel better.”

Sam sighs. “I’m just-- I’m just worried about your safety. Above anything else.”

“I’ll be fine. Like I said, no more plotting for me.”

“You promise?”

“Promise.”

Sam stares at Gabriel, and that worry still lingers in his eyes, and Gabriel wonders why his problems never seem to let him solve them. He escaped his family, but he worries for them every night; he tries to fix things with Sam and he just gets more worry in its place. He knows that it’s because Sam loves him, but Gabriel has never been good at being dependent on anyone. He doesn’t want to burden Sam, even as much as he wants them to trust each other. It’s a paradox that he can’t seem to free himself from, no matter how hard he tries.

“We’ll figure it out, Gabe. Eventually.” Sam pulls Gabriel to rest against his shoulder, and Gabriel sinks into the contact and hopes that he will not seem as desperate as he feels. 

“And if we don’t?”

“We’re kind of stuck together,” Sam says. “We’ll figure it out. No matter how long it takes. You, me, and Eileen.”

“And the baby.”

“And our kid.”

The room is quiet, for a moment, and for the first time seems not to be filled with the tension that had pervaded it throughout the evening and for days and weeks and months and years before. They will be alright, sooner or later.

“You know, I really didn’t like you all that much when we first got married,” Sam says, in the quiet. “It took a few months before you started to grow on me, and I don’t think I really loved you until I saw how you were with Eileen. And then it just-- It was like I couldn’t stop it. I started seeing all the ways that you complimented me and her, the ways that you filled something I didn’t know was missing. And I always worried that, since you didn’t want kids of your own, you would push us away when the time came and Eileen had our child. And then she found out she was pregnant, and you--”

“I pushed you away. Like you worried about.”

“Yeah.”

Gabriel shakes his head lightly, letting out a sigh. “I didn’t do it for the reason that you think. I just didn’t want to take you away from her when she needs you.”

“She needs you too, though, Gabe. Just like I need you, and just like our baby will need you.”

Gabriel meets Sam’s eyes, and he sees that the worry always so present within them has transformed into something resembling  _ hurt, _ and Gabriel doesn’t what he can say to make it better. And part of him knows that he can’t say anything, that all he can do is try to make things better with his actions and hope that it mends the wounds. “I know,” Gabriel says, because in so many ways he has known for months now that things have been broken between them and that it’s all his fault. “I’m not going to push you away again, or her.”

“Good.” Sam’s arms tighten around Gabriel’s waist. “I don’t want to lose you, emotionally, physically, whatever. I want you here with us, as much as you can be.”

“I know. And I’ll try.”

“That’s all I can ask.”


	5. Adam

The journey to the capital takes four days, although Adam suspects that it’s only because Michael took his time guiding him through the mountain passes, rather than speeding through as he did on flat land. It’s still months from winter, but a chill lingers in the mountain air that is rarely present in the flatlands.

As they make their way out of the pass and into the city proper, Adam feels eyes on them. The people milling about the city, tradesmen and merchants and soldiers and children, seem to come to a stop as Michael and Adam ride past them, their eyes ever trained on the prince. Adam can’t help but feel uncomfortable under their gaze, as if he is being judged and questioned and wondered about.  _ Who is this boy riding with the prince?  _ they must be thinking, and perhaps his smell is on the wind and they know he is an omega and they must suspect that he has been claimed by a prince.

When they arrive at the palace, a woman is waiting for them at the bottom of the great stairs that lead up to doorways and windows and what seems like miles of brick and stone. There are others, guards no doubt, standing near her, but it is obvious from a hundred feet away that she is royal and they are not. She is wearing a long-sleeve purple dress that seems more fit for the weather than anything Michael or Adam are wearing, and she wears a gold circlet around her forehead. As they approach her, Adam sees the clear resemblance between her and Michael. They do have the same eyes.

Michael dismounts his horse, once they are a few feet away, and he nods to his sister. “How did you know when we would arrive?” Michael asks, as he hands the reins to a servant.

“I had the guards inform me when you were spotted within the city,” Raphael replies. She is soft-spoken yet commanding, a combination of traits that does not come without practice. “I wanted to be the first to see your omega.”

“Well, I’m right here,” Adam says, as he follows Michael’s lead. “It’s nice to meet you, your highness.” From Michael’s words about Raphael, he figures that being overly polite is probably the best way to go.

“Mm,” Raphael hums, looking over him. She turns back to Michael a moment later. “Your children will have no worries about height.”

“I suppose not,” Michael says. He turns to look at Adam, sending him a look that might be supportive but seems more amused than anything else. “At least neither of us can tease the other for being shorter.”

Raphael keeps a straight face, but she seems, at the same time, to be broadcasting an air of amused annoyance. “I suppose we should simply be glad that the jokes are based on excess of height rather than lack of it.”

Michael grins. “We don’t tease you and Gabriel  _ that _ badly.”

Raphael raises an eyebrow. “You once called him an elf.”

“That was more about his mischief than his height.”

“And then Lucifer pointed at me and said that there were  _ two _ elves, and you failed to disagree with him. Yet you disagree with him on everything else he has ever said. Ever.”

Adam has to restrain himself from laughing. Michael is more often arguing with Gabriel than getting along with him, and it’s nice to see Michael interacting with one of his siblings in such a  _ normal _ way. Raphael keeps a straight face, but Adam can see the dry humor behind her words. She is somewhat dismissive, but Adam is used to that. Hopefully, he’ll grow on her enough to have a real conversation someday.

“Well,” Michael says, taking Adam’s hand, “I’m sure I had my reasons. Is the rest of the family busy?”

Raphael leads them up the stairs, content to ignore Michael’s obvious redirection. “We can go to see Kelly and the baby, first. Father and Lucifer are out, not to be back until dinner. I haven’t spoken to Mother Rowena today, though I’m guessing she’ll join us for dinner.”

“Alright.” Michael’s grip on Adam’s hand tightens. “Are you sure Kelly will wish to see us, though? Adam is--”

“Kelly understands things, brother. Don’t worry.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

And there’s an exchange that Adam cannot claim to understand, as much as he feels like he should. Kelly is Lucifer’s wife, if he understands correctly, and he can guess why she wouldn’t want to see them. Adam is kind of crashing the party, after all, even if it is in the interest of the greater good. But her  _ understanding things? _ What is that supposed to mean?

Raphael and Michael make small talk, as they walk through the palace. If Adam had thought the Winchesters enjoyed showing off their pointless wealth, it is nothing compared to the cold, precise opulence of the palace. It is not garish, not cluttered with knick-knacks, it is elegant. The hallways are as wide as sitting rooms; the ceilings are all as high as church ceilings; the walls which aren’t exposed stone or brick are covered in a light wood that shines in the light that comes through the windows. The whole palace shines, and Adam can’t help but feel out of place within its walls.

Eventually, they come to a wing of the palace where the ceilings are not so high and the walls not so pristinely bare. “The heirs’ quarters,” Michael explains, as Raphael walks a few steps ahead. “It’s made to house more than one heir, but it definitely wasn’t made for three of us. Lucifer and his family take one half of the wing, Raphael and I--and you--take the other.”

“All three of you are heirs?”

“Technically, yes.”

“And are there rules, for who’s allowed to be in each others’ spaces? I’m guessing wandering around without knocking is unadvised.”

Michael huffs, something almost like a laugh. “Not  _ rules, _ per-say, but overall, knocking is advised. Lucifer is picky about who goes into his bed chamber, but he and Kelly sleep separately most nights and Kelly doesn’t mind our company. So, don’t go in Lucifer’s room and you’ll be fine.”

“Or my study,” Raphael says, her voice floating back to them.

“Right,” Michael says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Raphael has an organization system that the rest of us aren’t wise enough to understand, so we’re not allowed to even be in the vicinity of her book collection.”

“If you would learn the system--”

“Then I could be exposed to all of the knowledge you hold in your hands, yes, I’m aware.”

They come to a set of double doors, and Raphael ushers them through. It leads to another, smaller hallway, but it seems more lived-in than the clean, lifeless hallways that have preceded it. There are five doors off of this hallway: one, at the end, is another set of double doors, while the other four are more ordinary. Adam leans into Michael as the prince waits for his sister to close the double doors they’d just walked through. She then walks to one of the ordinary doors and knocks.

The room is a bed chamber, well decorated and with a homely feel to it. The room is not self-contained, it has doors on each side of the room that presumably lead to other rooms within the suite. There is a bassinet off to the side of the room, but it is empty, the baby it was meant for held in his mother’s arms.

“Kelly,” Raphael says, walking over to the woman who is sitting up in bed, “we wanted you to meet Michael’s new husband.”

Kelly looks up at him, and Adam prepares himself to feel apprehension or resentment in her gaze. After all, he is the person that could unseat her, could take her place in the palace’s hierarchy. It would make sense for her to dislike him, whether it was for her own sake or purely out of wanting to defend her husband. But instead, she smiles at him, gesturing for him to come and sit beside her.

Adam sits on the edge of the bed and looks down at the baby resting against Kelly’s chest. He seems to be sleeping at the moment, his soft breaths his only movement. Adam looks back up to Kelly. “I’m Adam.”

Her eyes trail over him, no doubt putting together the lack of a last name and the still-drab clothes he wears. “You were a commoner, weren’t you?”

Adam nods. “I’m guessing you’re from a noble family?”

“Yes. But don’t worry. You’ll learn quickly.” Kelly lifts the baby, almost as if-- “You know how to hold babies safely, right?”

“I do,” Adam says. He takes the baby from her, making sure to keep his head supported. “My mom was a healer, so I had to help with a lot of newborns growing up.”

Kelly glances up at Raphael, who is hovering a few feet away. “I’m sure you two will get along well, then.”

“In what way?”

Michael answers. “Raphael is a healer as well. It’s what all of her  _ carefully organized _ books are about.”

“You’re a princess, though,” Adam says as he looks up at Raphael. She glances between Michael and Adam, sending Michael a little look that Adam can’t seem to decode.

“Even royalty must be useful, if we’re worth anything,” Raphael says, after a moment. “Michael is a warrior, I’m a healer. We do what we can.”

The first dinner with Michael’s family is perhaps the most awkward meal that Adam has ever sat through, matched only by breakfast with his own family a few days prior.

Michael doesn’t wait to be asked, this time; he walks into the room with Adam’s hand in his and announces to his assembled family members that, “This is my husband, Adam. I’ve just returned with him this afternoon.”

The blond man, who Adam assumes to be Lucifer, looks up with an eyebrow raised and asks, “And which hole did you drag this rat out of?”

“Lucifer,” the man sitting at the head of the table warns. He must be the king, Michael’s father, but he is more diminutive than his title would suggest. For an alpha, even sitting down, he seems  _ tiny. _ And kind of-- Well, maybe “scruffy” isn’t the right term, but he certainly doesn’t seem to have the same elegance as all of his children. Nevertheless, he does project an air of authority, as Lucifer settles back into his chair without further comment.

“He’s Winchester’s son,” Michael explains, nonetheless, and while Adam should’ve known that it was coming, he still hates to hear the words.

“Winchester’s sons are both alphas,” Lucifer says.

“Illegitimate son.”

“Well, that seems like something you have in common, then.”

“Boys.”

Lucifer rolls his eyes, and Michael just squeezes Adam’s hand in what is probably supposed to be reassurance. It is not reassuring. When they finally take their seats at the table, Adam positioned between Michael and Raphael, Adam begins to understand the true meaning of  _ odd man out.  _ Yeah, sitting at his father’s table and listening to his blood act as if he were truly family had been awkward, but it is nothing compared to the feeling of being utterly unaware of how he’s supposed to interact with his new family without stepping on any toes. As if his mere presence were not already an irritant.

And all of that is before Adam even starts to consider the way what Gabriel and Michael had told him about Lucifer--while sparse--was more than enough to make him feel on edge in his presence. The cruel, narcissistic possible future king also hating Adam’s guts? On some level, it feels worse than the idea that the  _ actual _ king might hate Adam.

“So,” the king says, once they’ve all settled down, “I never thought I’d see the day Michael found someone.”

Adam glances at Michael, who looks perfectly pleasant and doesn’t seem to notice the backhanded insult. “I’m very glad to have found him,” Michael says. “I’m hoping that he’ll fit well into the family, he already has Gabriel’s approval.”

Ah yes, Gabriel’s approval. Truly the most trustworthy endorsement you can receive. 

“So how did you two meet?” Rowena asks, scrutinizing Adam. “It’s not that often that a commoner and a royal marry, unless…”

“Not yet,” Michael says, as an answer to her unspoken question. “Adam accompanied me to look for Gabriel when he went missing. He’s a healer.”

“Y’know, Mikey,” Lucifer said, tilting his head toward Michael, “they usually say that alphas always try to marry someone like their omega parent, but in this case I think you’re just trying to marry someone like your sister.”

“Shut up,” Raphael says, slamming her fork down onto her plate.

“Woah,” Lucifer says. He puts his hands up in the universal gesture of feigned innocence. “Am I missing something here, or is that a bit of a rough reaction to a little joke?”

“Lucifer, don’t talk about your sister that way,” the king says, with a level of exasperation in his voice that makes it clear he’s had to say this exact sentence more times than he cared to count. 

“Am I not allowed to joke?”

“Not about that.”

Lucifer rolls his eyes, and Raphael looks toward her father with gratitude clear in her eyes. Wow. Adam had heard they were dysfunctional, but. He hadn’t expected them all to argue like children and be scolded for it in the same way. Sure, he’d watched Sam and Dean interact, but their dysfunction wasn’t quite on the same level. They’d argue, and sometimes it would be in the same way children argue, but it wasn’t like they were actively trying to make a sport out of it. Sam and Dean argued about their real (and numerous) issues. Either Adam’s missing out on a lot of information that would make these arguments make sense, or Lucifer just enjoys arguing for the sake of it.

“To return to what I was saying,” Michael says, in the quiet that lingers after the king’s scolding, “Adam was quite helpful in rescuing Gabriel, and our discussions on the journey made me realize that he was… That he could be something that I was missing.”

Michael looks at Adam as he speaks, and something in Michael’s gaze makes Adam’s stomach feel like it’s caught in his throat, like he’s blushing and blinking wildly and frozen in place all at the same time under Michael’s eyes. Because Michael looks at him with more emotion than Adam is prepared for, he looks at him with a quiet intensity that Adam had ignored when they were alone in the dark together and that Adam had brushed aside as being due to the bond during the first few days after. And maybe it still is the bond, but combined with Michael’s words… Michael looks at Adam like he’s the most fascinating thing in the world, and also like he has no idea that he’s been caught staring.

“So you left him for weeks, and only just a few days ago went back to claim him?” Lucifer raises an unimpressed eyebrow.

Michael’s gaze finally leaves Adam, and he stares back at Lucifer, challenging him. “I looked at my nephew,” Michael says, “and I realized that I didn’t want to give up on having a family of my own.”

Lucifer’s gaze turns distinctively bitter, but he doesn’t reply. Perhaps he doesn’t know how, perhaps he is conflicted over whether his hatred of Michael is worth it to make a comment that could deflate his own love of his son. Perhaps he simply doesn’t want to give Michael’s words more weight than they already have.

“In any case,” Rowena says, a warning in her eyes, “I take it Adam wants this as much as you do?”

“I do,” Adam says. He struggles for something to say that isn’t about how much he’d wanted to be in Michael’s bed for as long as he’s been old enough to really understand attraction. Probably not the best thing to tell the new in-laws. “He, um, he completes me, too.”

“Aww,” Rowena coos, at the same time that the rest of Michael’s family--Raphael included--look like they’re going to be sick from the sweetness. “Well, I’m sure you’ll be happy together. And Raphael will be excited to have more nieces and nephews to watch over, right, dear?”

“Overjoyed,” Raphael says, and looks like she doesn’t mean it in the least.

“Aren’t you worried she’s going to hear us?”

“Believe it or not, Raphael is rarely in her room for any purpose other than sleeping.”

“Yeah, and we’re going to have sex  _ at night. _ When she will be in her room. Right next to ours. Trying to sleep.”

“And if we are too loud, I have no doubt she will leave us a note in the morning telling us not to do it again.”

Adam sighs, falling back into the sheets of Michael’s bed. He’s not going to win this argument, and in some ways, he came into it knowing he would lose. But the layout of Michael and Raphael’s suite--identical to Lucifer’s, except for the usage of certain rooms--is a bit of a nightmare, and Adam feels like he should let Michael know that. Was it nice to have Raphael nearby in case there was a problem? Sure, maybe, but that doesn’t make any of the other problems any better. Beyond just the noise issue, there’s the bathroom issue. The suite has one bathroom, inaccessible from the suite’s central hallway and connected to both Michael and Adam’s room and Raphael’s. Michael had spent a good five minutes earlier in the evening telling Adam about the symbolic locks on the doors that would tell you whether or not the bathroom was in use, and by the end of the explanation, Adam was convinced it was a miracle that neither of them had walked in on the other in an awkward situation.  _ Can’t you just knock?  _ Adam had asked, and Michael had furrowed his brows as if Adam had come from another planet.

“Well,” Adam says as he lays back in the sheets, “are you going to test that theory tonight, or are we going to wait on it?”

“Do you want to?” Michael sits down on the edge of the bed beside him, laying his hand gently on Adam’s bare stomach. It tickles, but Adam’s not going to squirm away, not when Michael’s looking at him like that.

“I’m not opposed.” Adam reaches up to grasp at Michael’s neck, pulling him down into a soft kiss. They’re going to find out how loud they are sooner or later, and Adam’s not really in the mood to lay down and sleep. He’s too anxious for that. He wasn’t anxious when he agreed to marry Michael, and he wasn’t even particularly anxious on the journey or earlier in the day. But now, sitting on Michael’s bed and knowing that this is  _ his _ bed too, he can’t seem to process how his life has changed so much in only a few days, how his role is now so different. How he’s gone from a cot in an attic and uncomfortable inn beds to the almost unbearably soft, feather-down bed of a prince. And there’s a part of Adam--a part that he really wishes would shut up--that tells him that he’s never going to feel comfortable on this bed until he gets fucked on it.

This, after all, is Adam’s role. He and Michael are doing what they must, they are in this marriage to ensure that the more competent and just heir gets the crown. They have their selfish reasons for it, too--Adam wants certain laws passed, and beyond that, he  _ wants _ Michael--but they are united in this mission. But within that, there are different roles, roles that Adam can’t help but ponder and can’t escape and wonders whether he’s putting the role upon himself. Because he knows Michael respects him, probably more than most of the alphas Adam’s ever interacted with, and yet there’s a certain  _ lie back and think of your kingdom _ logic to everything. Lie back, let your husband (who is the prince that you dreamed about for years and never thought would actually look your way) fuck you, hope that the child you conceive is an alpha, repeat process.

This is Adam’s life. No backing out now.

“Everything alright?” Michael pulls away from the kiss, looking down at Adam with a soft look in his eyes so incongruous with everything that Adam has been thinking. Michael isn’t some abstract husband role, he isn’t someone that Adam has to close himself off from. He’s trying his best to be good for Adam, to keep him safe and happy, and Adam wants to be able to trust him. He wants to see love in Michael’s eyes and know that he can truly say that he reflects back Michael’s love in equal measure. Someday, perhaps, they will be able to look at each other that way.

“Fine,” Adam says, letting the hand he has on Michael’s neck shift to cup his cheek. Michael leans into the touch, and Adam has never seen an alpha do anything quite so gentle. “Just thinking too much.”

“About what?”

“Us.”

“What about us?”

“Whether we… This is going to sound either stupid or genius, but if it sounds genius it’s in the worst way.”

Michael smiles. “Continue.”

“We have certain roles that we have to fill, right? You’re the heir, I’m your husband, stuff like that. Roles come with things you’re supposed to do. And we can do well within those roles, and maybe we can even try and push back against those roles if we try. But part of me just wonders whether we’ll ever actually be able to ignore those roles all together. So that we can be happy together, without having to put ourselves into those roles. Just, like, plain connection.”

“Well, one, you’re definitely thinking a bit much while we’re kissing,” Michael says after a moment. “But two, just because we have these roles doesn’t mean we can’t have a true connection. We have things that we have to do, in our roles, but we have each other. We can see each other as we are, even if we have these roles, too.”

“As we are?”

“Mm.” Michael tilts his head to press a kiss to Adam’s hand. “Accepting each other as we are, isn’t that what we agreed to?”

“We’ll change each other, though. Kind of inevitably. And that’s not something to be afraid of.”

“I’m not afraid.” Michael furrows his brows, as if Adam had actually accused him of that.

“I never said you were.”

“What were you saying, then?”

“I’m saying that we’re not just seeing each other as we are and accepting that, faults and all, we’re working together to try and correct for whatever faults we find. If I do something that annoys you, you tell me, alright? So that we can fix our problems before they turn into bigger ones.”

“Alright.” Michael leans down to kiss Adam once more. “We have enough problems without creating our own, don’t we?”

The other tasks that Adam is put through over the following weeks are much less fun than his marital duties. For starters, he’s put through what feels like a million clothes fittings-- _ we’re the exact same height and nearly exact same proportions, Michael, can’t we just share your wardrobe?-- _ followed by hours of lessons on court etiquette with an always annoyed-seeming courtier named Zachariah.

Zachariah is a beta, older, and overqualified for the job of teaching the peasant-turned-prince how to survive in court. These are the three attributes that can be reasonably deduced from Zachariah’s behavior, and most everything beyond that seems to be constantly shifting. He tries to make jokes, but none of them land, and he can go from plastered smiles to barely restrained anger in the course of seconds, and he returns to the polite pleasant air just as quickly. When Adam had told him, with a blank gaze and only a slight tremor to his voice, that he did not,  _ in fact, _ know how to read the books that Zachariah had assigned to him, the man had gone through all five stages of grief in the course of thirty seconds.

When Adam tells Michael about the incident that evening, it brings a small smile to the alpha’s lips. “I’m guessing he regrets volunteering for the job, now.”

“He volunteered?”

Michael nods. “It gets him out of Metatron’s shadow for a few months, and that’s good enough a reason to do anything.”

Beyond the etiquette classes--and Zachariah’s half-hearted attempts at teaching Adam how to read and write more than his own name--there are responsibilities which Adam is lucky enough to have Michael’s company for. 

“I don’t think I can smile for much longer,” Adam whispers out of the corner of his lips, gaze locking with Michael’s. Michael seems to be taking the hours-long posing in stride, which isn’t surprising given the portraits of him which have already been made.

“You’ll be fine,” Michael whispers in return. His hand rests firmly on Adam’s hip, massaging at his skin through the fabric. “They’ll just paint a smile on you anyway. It’s the look in the eyes that matters most.”

“Is it?”

It is. Michael’s eyes tell everything.

One night, a few weeks after things finally seem like they’ve begun to settle (as much as they can settle, anyway, with Michael’s family), a knock comes on their door an hour after they retire for the evening.

“I need to borrow your husband,” Raphael says, standing in the half-open doorway. She’s not dressed in night-clothes. This only strengthens Adam’s theory that Raphael sleeps approximately four hours per night, possibly fewer. The main piece of evidence is her lack of passive-aggressive notes about the sound level, but everyday Adam seems to find new support for his theory.

“Why?” Adam asks, looking down at the book that Zachariah had assigned him to for the week. He’s still not the quickest reader, but he can get through a chapter at a time with some time and effort. “Michael spent like, three hours with you earlier today.”

Raphael blinks at him as if he were the dumbest person on the planet. “I was referring to borrowing  _ you _ for a few minutes. My brother needs his rest.”

“And I don’t?”

“Just--” Raphael sighs, looking across the room to where Michael is sitting at his desk and going over reports. “Michael, I’ll have him back within the hour.”

Michael makes a gesture that Adam can’t interpret but that Raphael takes as permission. She turns to the hallway, clearly expecting Adam to follow behind her like a lost puppy. And Adam, knowing his sister-in-law well enough to know that she doesn’t like being disobeyed, follows.

“Where are you taking me?”

“The archives,” Raphael says, leading them out of the heirs’ quarters and into the main palace. It’s quiet at night, everyone gone except for the guards. The hallways are only illuminated by the light of the moon, the circlet of jewels around Raphael’s head shining in the moonlight. “There’s something I want you to read, now that you’re proficient enough.”

“The archives?”

“Archives of the royal family, dating back four and a half centuries. I’m sure you’ve seen Michael keeping his journal?”

He doesn’t do it every night, but he sits down to write in the journal often enough that Adam thinks Michael might love that book more than Michael loves him. “I have.”

“We’re all required to do it. Including you, once you’re up to the task. It’s all self-censored, to a certain degree, because we all know it will end up in the archives once we die, but they can still be interesting to read. It helps to answer questions that we would otherwise lose to time. Why certain laws and edicts were passed, how certain conflicts were resolved, that kind of thing. No journals can be destroyed, no matter how estranged a member of the family was.”

“And you’re taking me to the archives...why, exactly?”

“Because there’s something you need to read.”

Not terribly helpful, Raphael. “If it’s just journals, you’re taking me to read someone’s journals, right?”

“Correct.”

“Whose?”

“You’ll see.”

The archives are in the basement, as Adam almost expected them to be based on the name alone. There’s a lantern at the bottom of the stairs that’s already lit, and Raphael picks it up to carry without looking at it, as if she had left it there herself. She probably had. The archives are one singular room that seems to stretch on for infinity in every direction, with bookshelves that stretch from floor to ceiling aligned in careful rows. There is no outward markings of a classification system, no dates or alphabetization. Raphael leads the way forward in the near-darkness, seeming to know perfectly where to go.

After a few minutes, Raphael stops in front of a shelf that looks no different from any of the others. She kneels down, placing the lantern at their feet and reaching for a few of the volumes placed on the bottom shelf. She passes them to Adam, the leather-binding and accumulated dust tickling at his fingertips.

“Four journals,” Raphael says, standing up and brushing the dust from her hands. “One for each year that he lived here, after he’d learned to write well enough to keep them.”

Not someone born into royalty, then, and a he. Oh. Could it be-- But why would Raphael have him read these journals? “You mean, these are your omega fa--”

“Yes,” Raphael says. “Michael hasn’t read them, I doubt anyone else has. But you should. You are… You are similar to him, in many ways. Michael isn’t like our Father, not enough that the danger you are in is the same, but you should read it nonetheless.”

“Why did-- Why did you decide to read them? If no one else in your family has?”

Raphael looks at Adam, and perhaps it is merely the lamplight casting shadows, but he swears that she looks  _ guilty. _ “I wondered how someone could ever do what he did,” Raphael says, and Adam gets the feeling that these are the most open words he will ever hear from her. “I thought that if I read his words and saw the world through his eyes, I would begin to understand. I thought that I would-- I thought that I might see the situation and not the people within it.”

“And did you find that?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Raphael turns away. “He never admits to killing her, never gives any indication that he was planning it. He-- It’s sick, I suppose, knowing what happened, but it seemed like he loved her as a sister. He said as much. He was even-- When our Father turned to him, when Lucifer had just been born and Father couldn’t be intimate with her, he tried to tell Father that they shouldn’t be so close, that they shouldn’t betray her trust. After Michael was born, they’d never-- Until then.”

The realization washes over Adam like he has just waded into an ocean in the dead of winter. “Until you were conceived.”

Raphael nods. “And never again, at least as far as his journals document.” Raphael pauses, and when she speaks again, Adam gets the impression that she’s not even really aware that she is speaking the words aloud. “It’s one thing to be an accident. It’s another thing to be a betrayal.”

“I’m sorry,” Adam says, because what else is there to say?

It takes a moment, before Raphael looks back at him. “They weren’t in love,” she says, “Father and him. But they were friends, they trusted each other. I suppose trust can always be broken, can’t it?”

Adam doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t think Raphael was expecting an answer. They leave the archives in silence, returning to their rooms as quickly as they can with the moonlight bearing down on them. The last thing she’d said to him, it felt like a threat just as much as her giving him the journals was surely supposed to feel like she was helping him. But it is a threat, too, a reminder that people in their position do things that they shouldn’t and that they end up dead because of their decisions. It’s a reminder that, no matter what Michael likes to think of them, they are still the roles that they fill.

Adam sits on their bed while Michael sits across the room, still at his desk. He undoes the clasp on the front of one of the journals, hoping that it is the first one, and opens it to the first page.

_ Joshua, prince consort to Crown Prince Charles. _

Adam won’t let himself break Michael like that. He won’t.

He starts reading.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're thinking "Joshua the gardener wouldn't do this," hold onto that thought.


	6. Kelly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kelly is our final POV character so from here on out there should be fewer flashbacks. This is also one of the darkest chapters given Kelly's relationship with Lucifer, so if you don't want to deal with all of the darkest parts, you can skip the flashbacks. You'll lose a bit of context to Kelly's relationships to Lucifer and Raphael, but it shouldn't affect the overall plot too much.
> 
> Warnings: Violence, mention of miscarriage, Lucifer in general

Most noble omegas are married at twenty, almost all married by twenty-five. Kelly Kline hadn’t cared much for the age standard, but her family (alpha grandmother chief among them) had cared deeply. And so, as her twenty-fifth birthday approached, a plan had been formed. They would settle for any noble alpha, if it came down to that, but they would aim as high as they could get. Fortunately for her family, and unfortunately for Kelly herself, they had been exceedingly successful.

They had invited Lucifer to visit the Kline estate with an excuse that was surely so flimsy the real intention must have been obvious to anyone who knew of Kelly’s existence, and to the surprise of all involved he had agreed to visit for a few weeks. Kelly had always avoided the great balls in the capital, so when Lucifer had arrived at her family’s estate, a small entourage of bodyguards and servants at his side, it was the first time that she had ever seen him. He had greeted her grandmother first, as was customary, but his eyes followed Kelly from the moment he arrived. “My young Lady Kline,” Lucifer had said, as he’d placed a kiss on her knuckles. She’d felt her heart thud in her chest, for how had  _ she _ caught the eye of a prince?

The first few days were spent in polite company, always with an uncle or a cousin watching on and leading the conversation. Lucifer was quiet, more quiet than Kelly would expect of a prince, but he had a dry sense of humor that played to Kelly’s own wit. Within the first week, Lucifer had convinced the chaperones to let them go on walks alone, and from there it had been history. Kelly had always had a great love for literature and history, and Lucifer was happy to discuss poetry with her, to tell her the little family rumors about the kings and queens she’d read about in her books. He didn’t touch her without her permission, even in the most innocent of ways, and he watched on with a little smile as she fed the ducks that lived in the lake.

One day, two and a half weeks into his stay, she had grown curious. “Why did you agree to come visit us, here? I’m sure you have plenty of omegas after you, it’s not like I’m unique.”

Lucifer had waited a moment to respond, and as Kelly watched the wind blow through his soft blond curls, she almost thought that she had asked one question too many. “I wanted to get away from my siblings for a few weeks,” he said. “Your family’s invitation came at the right time, and I  _ was _ interested in meeting you. Most of the omegas that get pushed into my face are too young to be all that interesting to talk to.”

“You’re lonely,” she said, as if in realization. She had always thought the princes, surrounded as they were by family and servants and courtiers, would never find the time to be lonely. But as she looked at Lucifer, standing with his face to the sun, she saw the tired look in his eyes, the circles and shadows that painted him as a man with more emotion than he could bear to admit.

“I guess I am,” he said. “I can’t-- I can’t exactly talk to my family about much. My Father buries himself in his work to avoid thinking about family issues, and my siblings-- Well, I’m sure you’ve heard the history.”

“About your mother?”

Lucifer nodded, and a pained look came across his face, almost like he was scared to say the next words aloud. He came closer to her, taking one of her hands in both of his and leaning forward until he was mere inches from her face. “I’m scared of what they might do, Kelly,” he whispered. “Michael and Raphael. Michael-- He’s violent, our Father has to send him away to keep him from hurting people, and Raphael-- She claims she’s a healer, but healers know how to inflict just as well as they know how to cure it. They’re always so cold to me, and I just… I’m worried what they might do to get the throne for themselves. They slander my name, they push me away, they--” Lucifer’s voice cracked. “What if one day they try to finish what their father started?”

Kelly remembers looking up at him, and seeing the shine in his eyes and imagining the Michael and Raphael that Lucifer described. She imagined them as monsters, she imagined them as vultures stealing from the already damned. Lucifer, the poor innocent prince, living in fear of the brother and sister with murder in their blood. He must’ve seen the sympathy in Kelly’s eyes, seen the way that her heart broke for the victim Lucifer claimed to be. He raised a hand to her cheek, brushing a stray hair out of her eyes as he laid his thumb on her cheekbone.

“You can help me, Kelly. I can make sure they have no right to the throne, but I need you to say yes.”

“To what?”

“Marry me,” Lucifer said. “Our child will cement my place as the heir, and I can make sure that they don’t hurt anyone. We can be happy, Kelly.”

Kelly would later come to regret it, when she’d realized who Lucifer truly was, but at the time she couldn’t envision a future where she didn’t say yes. Her family was overjoyed for her to have caught Lucifer’s eye, and her own sense of justice was strong enough that she  _ needed _ to help him. There wasn’t a thought in her mind to the contrary. He hadn’t given her any reason to doubt him, not at that point. And so she’d stood under the autumn sun, looked up into Lucifer’s eyes, and she made the wrong decision.

“Yes.”

The nights are better when they are silent. This is something Kelly learned a long time ago. The silence can press down on you, sure, but at least you know that there is no danger coming in the darkness. Nothing more dangerous than usual, at least. There are no ghosts nipping at Kelly’s heels, no monsters lurking under her bed. The only danger sleeps next door, and he has no intention of killing Kelly yet.

A soft cry rings out in the darkened room, and Kelly is on her feet before he can wake anyone else. She crosses the room to Jack’s cradle, picking him up and holding him to her chest, rocking him there and hoping that he will quiet down. “Shh, shh, I’m here.”

Kelly rarely sleeps through the night anymore. Not only because Jack wakes her, but because she can barely sleep in the interim hours either. She’s always on edge, always worried that she will be too deep in her sleep to wake up and answer his cries. Lucifer may have no intention of killing Kelly, but Jack is-- He’s not useful to Lucifer, not in the way that an alpha child would be, not in the way that Kelly is. If Lucifer were angry at him, there’s no reason for him to spare Jack that anger. So Kelly stays awake, so that she can keep Jack from crying too loudly and keep Lucifer from seeing him as more of an annoyance than a curiosity. He is her baby, after all, and if Raphael is correct, he will be her only one.

Raphael and Naomi give Kelly herbs to treat pains, to make her healthier, to heal the wounds that come from bearing a child. This, Lucifer knows. What he does not know, and what he  _ cannot _ know, is that buried amongst the other herbs, the ones which do exactly what Kelly claims they do when he asks, there is a mixture that Raphael has given her to prevent conception. It was an implicit deal, if you were looking at it cynically; a gift, if you were being more charitable. With Adam’s presence comes the hope of an heir that is not Lucifer’s, and with that heir the likelihood of Lucifer’s banishment or death. So Kelly makes sure that she gives Adam and Michael as much time as they can to have said heir, and in return Raphael makes sure that Kelly and Jack will be safe when it all falls apart. A deal. Never articulated in as many words, but thoroughly communicated nonetheless.

“Kelly.”

The air freezes, and Kelly feels a shiver run down her back. He doesn’t sound angry, but that can change quickly. She turns, seeing him in the doorway. “You should go back to bed,” she murmurs. “I can handle him.”

Lucifer walks forward, taking Jack from her arms and leaning him against his own chest. Jack calms almost instantly, reaching out his little hand to press against Lucifer’s neck. Jack is innocent, naïve, he reaches for his father the way any child would. Kelly hopes that he never has to learn the danger which reaches back for him. “Hey, little man,” Lucifer says. He rocks Jack for a moment, before looking up at Kelly. “Just needs his daddy, doesn’t he?”

Kelly hums, looking away.

“You can go back to sleep, I’ll stay up with him until he falls asleep again,” Lucifer says. Kelly doesn’t know how to respond to that. She can’t tell him no, but she also can’t bear to leave Jack in Lucifer’s care without keeping watch on them. Lucifer sees her hesitation, the way that she looks between her bed with its tussled sheets and Lucifer’s hold on Jack. “You can trust me with him, Kelly. I know you don’t trust me on much, but you can trust me with Jack.”

“Can I?”

Lucifer huffs. “I’m a fratricide waiting to happen, not a filicide. Go back to bed.”

The first time Kelly ever saw Lucifer’s siblings was during her wedding, when her vows had been said, a tiara placed on her head, and she’d turned to face the chapel and seen the three of them sitting in the first row alongside King Charles and Rowena. Lucifer had kept her away from the palace in the months before the ceremony, citing concerns for her safety. (He did not explain how her safety would become any better after she was legally tied to him. Perhaps that had been the first red flag.) As she’d looked at the three of them sitting there, politely watching on with a wariness in their eyes visible even from the altar, she had felt her blood pound in her veins and her breath seize in her throat.  _ There they were. _

The reception, likewise, had led to hours of anxiety as Kelly had sat at Lucifer’s side and received gifts and greetings from the nobility who attended, always keeping half her focus on her new in-laws. Gabriel, the only one she’d had some familiarity with before her marriage, spent the evening glued to Raphael’s side, possibly to avoid his own in-laws. (The Winchesters, Kelly would later learn, had come to the ceremony only out of support for Gabriel, who was required to attend. Kelly doubted the omega prince appreciated said support.) Raphael, likewise, spent most of the evening trying to stick as close as possible to Michael’s side, which meant that the three of them were functionally inseparable. If Kelly hadn’t been as terrified of Michael and Raphael as she was, the sight of Michael being followed around by his two shorter siblings might have made her laugh.

As it was, Kelly kept imagining the worst. What might they do to her, if given the chance? Would they kill her in her sleep, or poison her medicine? Would they kill her children, if it came down to it? Even pushing away her more alarmist worries, the simple worries of new family rang through her mind. Would they reject her, as Lucifer had said they rejected him? What would Kelly do, left in a palace larger than her imagination with almost no one to trust?

Then, as the line of gift-givers thinned, Raphael came forward. Kelly felt her heart beat hard in her chest, the world narrowing around her as the only things she could focus on were the blood flowing in her veins, Raphael standing before her, and Lucifer’s hand in hers.

Raphael held a necklace in her hands, one she placed on the table before Kelly. Silver and diamonds. “It’s nice to finally have a sister,” Raphael said, looking straight at Kelly. “I hope you won’t find it too hard to adjust.”

“Thank you,” Kelly managed to choke out, suppressing the urge in her veins to freeze like the rabbits in the garden. “I hope so, too.”

“And,” Raphael said, turning to look between Kelly and Lucifer, “I have another gift. It may be too soon to think about children, but I wanted to go ahead and give it.” A servant following her proffers another small box, which Raphael lays upon the table beside the necklace. With hesitant fingers, Kelly opens the box to see a doll inside, clearly handmade. “It was Michael and I’s, growing up. We want to keep it in the family, but since neither of us will have children, we thought it would be best to give it to you and your future children.”

That was the first moment when Kelly started to see the truth. This was a peace offering, a reassurance. Even to Kelly, an outsider to the royals’ internal drama, it was clear that this was meant to assuage Lucifer and Kelly’s fears about challenges to the throne or to their marriage. And while Kelly’s fear of Michael would not dissipate for a long while after, her fear of Raphael disappeared in that moment. Partially because of the gifts themselves, partially because of the words which had accompanied them, and partially because Raphael’s eyes when she had looked at Lucifer had been filled with that same emotion that Kelly had seen in Lucifer’s eyes on that day in the garden.

In their bedroom, that night, with Lucifer’s mark on her neck and a growing suspicion that something was wrong, Lucifer had confirmed Kelly’s worries. “You should go through the gifts tomorrow, figure out what’s worth keeping,” Lucifer murmured, clearly trying to sound like his words were an afterthought. “There’s some that you should be rid of. That gaudy cape that Lady Wells gave, the doll my sister gave, all of the pairs of socks.”

“I’m not going to get rid of the doll,” Kelly said, keeping her voice low. She didn’t want to escalate the argument into a fight, even if she disagreed with him. “It was thoughtful, Lucifer.”

“I don’t trust anything from my sister.”

“It clearly means a lot to her.”

“And she won’t know you didn’t keep it.”

Kelly turned to look Lucifer in the eye, seeing the irritation creeping into his features. “Why do you care so much about a doll?”

“Like I said, I just don’t trust my sister. She’s trying to influence you, so that she can lie to you about me and turn you against me. It’s not the doll itself, it’s the aims behind it.”

Kelly couldn’t bear to look at him again after he said that. Yes, he could be telling the truth. But he could also be lying, in the same way he claimed that Raphael and Michael would lie if given the chance. But Kelly knew one thing for certain. She had seen that same look of fear in both Lucifer and Raphael’s eyes, a fear that was clearly directed at the other. One of them was faking that fear, and the other one was not. Kelly just wasn’t sure which was which.

Rowena doesn’t often spend time with Kelly, despite their similar roles within the palace, and so her invitation to go walking in the gardens together read from the first moment as an indication that Rowena wished to discuss something. What Rowena could possibly want to discuss with Kelly, the younger woman had no idea, but she agreed nonetheless. Best to hear her out, at least.

Kelly brings Jack along, which means that the first words out of Rowena’s mouth are, “Aww, let me hold the wee one. Sweet little boy, isn’t he?”

Rowena insists on holding Jack for the duration of their walk, and Jack spends most of that time reaching for Rowena’s earrings. Rowena doesn’t seem to mind. “So,” Rowena says, once they’re halfway through a loop of the garden, “have you heard the rumors?”

“Which rumors would those be?”

“Jack’s going to get a little cousin soon, if my wee birdie’s telling the truth.”

Kelly certainly hopes so. “Is your ‘wee birdie’ Raphael?”

“Might be,” Rowena says. “She won’t give me a straight answer, though. Just keeps alluding to the idea of Adam having a baby, and won’t say whether he’s actually having one.”

“They’re going to have one eventually,” Kelly says. She doesn’t see much of Michael or Adam, given Michael’s duties and Adam’s constant etiquette classes, but when she does see them they’re practically hanging off of each other. Even if they weren’t trying to pop a baby out for the politics, they’d have one sooner rather than later. “Just a matter of when.”

“Well, I’m guessing you’d rather later than sooner.”

Kelly raises an eyebrow. “Why would you think that?”

“Well, if Adam has an alpha before you do then he steals your spot, doesn’t he?”

He would, technically, but that’s the least of their problems. Does Rowena really not know, or does she just not care? “I’m not worried about that.”

“You’re really not? Even if it means the succession issue doesn’t turn out in your favor?”

Kelly stops, turning to look Rowena in the eye. Time to be more direct. It’s not like Lucifer doesn’t know Kelly prefers Michael in the succession issue, as long as Kelly says nothing about her own actions then there’s nothing Rowena could rat her out for. “We all know what my husband is like,” Kelly says. “If Michael and Adam have an alpha soon, then I wish them all the best.”

Rowena nods, looking away. “You’re more selfless than I am, I can say that.”

“I’m just letting it happen. It’s not that difficult.”

“Some of us do the selfless thing when it’s easy, some of us do the selfish thing even when it’s hard. That’s human nature, though, isn’t it?” Rowena smiles at Kelly, and Kelly can see something hiding beneath that smile, but she’s not sure what.

“Some of us do the selfless thing even when it’s hard.”

“Those people are rare, though.”

“Not as rare as you’d think.” Kelly looks down at her hands. “I thought I was doing the right thing when I got married. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. And I was-- I was wrong.”

Rowena looks at her, and Kelly sees genuine care in her eyes, something that approaches pity without being demeaning. “Well, at least you got this little one out of it,” Rowena says, looking down at Jack. “Can’t say you regret it all.”

Kelly smiles. “That’s true.”

Lucifer hadn’t liked it when Kelly began to see Raphael as a healer, but he hadn’t stopped it. The first few times that Raphael had come to their rooms to speak with Kelly, he had insisted upon being present, but with time had come a relaxation of Lucifer’s vigilance. A few months into Kelly’s marriage, during a pregnancy which she’d lost before the second trimester, Kelly noticed it.

As Raphael ran a hand over Kelly’s stomach, feeling for the barely-there bump, Kelly saw the marks on the back of Raphael’s hand. Little raised pink lines, light enough against her skin that Kelly almost wondered how she hadn’t noticed the scars before. “Raphael,” Kelly said, hesitating to ask the question as much as she knew she needed to ask it, “the scars on the back of your hand. Did-- Did Michael do that?”

Raphael froze. “Michael?”

“Lucifer told me that, well, he said that Michael could be quite violent.”

Raphael looked at Kelly for a moment that dragged on for an eternity, and then she sighed. “He told you that, did he?”

Kelly nodded.

“Michael isn’t… He’s a warrior, a soldier, but he’s not a violent person by nature. He doesn’t bring it home. He’s… He’s quite sweet, actually.”

Kelly felt her stomach drop. If before, she had known that either Lucifer or Raphael were faking their fear, now she had proof that one of them was actively lying. And Raphael did not act like she was lying, like she was covering up the misdeeds of a brother out of loyalty alone. She hadn’t spoken the way she so often did, with a careful lack of emotion and a deadpan humor. There  _ had _ been emotion in her voice, the same sweetness which Raphael claimed to see in Michael. Kelly was almost ready to believe her, to realize the implications of that belief. But first, she needed an answer.

“If Michael didn’t cause your scars… Who did? Or what did, I guess, if it’s just--”

“Lucifer,” Raphael said, quiet enough that it was more of an exhale than even a proper whisper. “He dragged a razor blade over the back of my hand, as a threat. He doesn’t normally use knives, they leave too much evidence. I guess he’s getting more confident.”

She had seen it coming. That didn’t make the accusation any easier to handle. Her husband, who had cast himself as the victim in order to win her support, had been the one tormenting his own siblings all along. Raphael could still be lying, of course, but there was an air of truth to her story that Lucifer’s stories had always failed to carry. His stories lacked detail, were simply vague claims of violence and hatred rather than real scars and explanations of how they got there.

Kelly willed the breath to return to her lungs, as she breathed out an equally quiet question. “He’s done it before, then?”

Raphael nodded. “For a long time.” She pulled up her left sleeve to past the elbow, turning her arm to show Kelly the little diamond-shaped scar that lay on the inside of her elbow. “He normally uses his bare hands, since it doesn’t leave evidence, but sometimes it leaves scars anyway. Once, when he shoved me to the ground, my elbow skid across the wooden floor. I didn’t even notice the wound until days later. It scarred over worse than any other wound he’s ever inflicted, though.”

Kelly didn’t know what to say.

Raphael rolled her sleeve back down. “He’s never hurt you, has he?”

“No. Not yet.”

Raphael nodded, biting her lip in what Kelly could only read as a reluctant acceptance of the situation they both found themselves in. “Tell me if he does.”

“Can you stop him, if he tries to hurt me?”

“No,” Raphael admitted. “But I can draw his anger away from you. I’m an alpha, I can take it.”

That was the last they explicitly spoke about the scars, or about Lucifer’s misdeeds, for a long time. But Kelly will never forget the look in Raphael’s eyes as she’d prepared to leave the room and had turned back to ask one more thing of her. “Kelly-- Michael doesn’t know about what Lucifer does. To me, to Gabriel, what he might do to you. And he doesn’t need to know. Do you understand me?”

Kelly had hesitated, for half a moment, as she had wondered why Raphael had never told Michael if Michael was the only one capable of really saving them all. But she had seen the resolve in Raphael’s eyes, and even though she hadn’t understood it at the time, she had accepted it. “Of course.”

Occasionally, when her husband is busy, Kelly will be asked to perform some of his more ceremonial duties. On this particular day, Kelly is tasked with reviewing the new members of the palace guard alongside Raphael, who is likewise standing in for Michael. Raphael, as uptight as ever, is dressed like she is simultaneously attending a wedding and a funeral.

The review of the guard is an entirely ceremonial task, which means that all Kelly and Raphael have to do is stand nearby and act as if they are paying attention while the head of the guard does all of the actual work. They are still allowed quiet conversation, as long as they keep their eyes on the proceedings, and Kelly’s not going to let an opportunity to question Raphael pass by.

“Is it true?”

“Is what true?” Raphael’s gaze doesn’t leave the guards. They’re arranged in a square formation, each of them clad in slight variations of the same uniform. From the distance that the two princesses are stood, little is visible about any of the individual guards.

“Mother Rowena told me that you’d been hinting to her that Adam was pregnant.”

“She told you that, did she?” Raphael sighs. “It’s not my place to say anything. When Adam is comfortable telling you, he’ll tell you.”

“Is that your way of saying ‘yes’ without assuming responsibility for telling me?”

“It’s me telling you to wait for Adam’s announcement.”

And that still sounds like a yes. “Does that mean I can stop taking the herbs you gave me?”

Raphael’s gaze flits to Kelly, if only for a second, before she returns to watching the guard. “No. Even if Adam tells you he’s pregnant, I would advise you to continue taking those herbs for as long as you can. You’re not-- You shouldn’t be running low yet. Are you?”

“No, I have enough. I was just… Wondering.”

“Well, I’m glad you asked, then. Any other questions?”

“Do I ever get off the herbs?”

Raphael is quick to answer. “When Adam births a healthy alpha child.”

“Even if that takes multiple years?”

“Yes.” Raphael sighs once more. “You wanted to help, Kelly.”

“I still do.”

“Then you know what you have to do.”

It’s not even that Kelly particularly dislikes the herbs, or that it’s any trouble to take them. She just worries how she will continue to explain them to Lucifer, when the months pass by and her explanation of postpartum pain becomes less and less viable an answer to his questions. “And what do I tell my husband?”

“You tell him that you’re still in pain. If we have to invent some kind of infection or some such ill to explain it, then we will.”

“You think he’ll believe that?”

“He’s not going to call you out on it for another half a year yet, likely longer if you’re a good enough actor.”

That’s not terribly reassuring, but Kelly’s got no choice but to trust Raphael on this. Kelly will just have to figure this out as she goes, with whatever support Raphael is willing to give along the way. Kelly had once agreed to risk her life for Lucifer; now, she has simply switched who she is risking her life for.

Raphael does not speak again, and Kelly has no other topics to discuss, so the rest of the ceremony passes quietly, listening to the master of the guard give his speech. (He is not a good orator.) When he finishes speaking, he gestures for Kelly and Raphael to come forward. A quick walk past the new guards, and they’ll be finished with their duties for the day. Kelly will, at least. Raphael has no doubt arranged more work for herself for the rest of the afternoon.

The new guards are a mix of men and women, all of them alphas. Kelly doesn’t find anything particularly interesting about them, and she would’ve guessed that Raphael felt the same if the princess hadn’t stopped in her tracks before one of the guards.

“What’s your name?” Raphael asks her. Raphael’s carefully blank expression is cracking at its seams, a light blush rising to her cheeks as she stares at the guard. Well that’s interesting.

“Billie, your highness.”

Kelly looks back and forth between Raphael and Billie. Billie’s standing proud, as any guard would, but she makes no move to avert her eyes from Raphael. If anything, she’s taking her time looking Raphael over, which is only intensifying the blush on Raphael’s cheeks. Kelly almost feels like she’s intruding on the two women, as if they weren’t having their eye-contact conversation in a very public setting.

Raphael nods abruptly, turning on her heel and continuing to walk down the line with Kelly. They complete the review without any further comment, and it’s only when they’re walking back to the main palace that Kelly dares to remark upon what she’s just witnessed.

“She’s an alpha, you know.”

“I’m aware,” Raphael responds, the remnants of the blush still permeating her cheeks.

“I’m just saying. You two looked like you wanted to… Well, whatever the polite term for alpha-on-alpha fornication is.”

Raphael looks over at Kelly, and Kelly doesn’t think she’s ever seen a more mortified look on Raphael’s face, as if the mere suggestion that Raphael would dare engage in something as base as sexual desire was an insult to the divine itself. “No one is to hear of this, you understand?”

“Clear as day,” Kelly says. “Although, you should tell her. I don’t think she’d object, with the way she was looking at you.”

Raphael blushes even harder, if that’s possible. “I don’t do... _ that.” _

“Relax a little. It might do you some good.”

Raphael rolls her eyes. Kelly just hopes that her advice might actually get through to her sister-in-law. Raphael so often bears the burden for, well, everyone, and it seems only right that she should allow herself fun of her own on occasion. And if that fun happens to involve other female alphas, that’s no place for Kelly to judge.

When Lucifer had realized that Kelly knew--which hadn’t taken long, with how close she’d kept to Raphael afterwards--he had stopped pretending. What had once been pleas for Kelly to help Lucifer and not to trust Michael and Raphael turned to  _ threats. _ “I could poison you, Kelly, and no one would ever suspect me for it, you know that, right?”

The first night he’d said that to her--though it was far from the last time he would say something like it--was the night that she’d decided to sleep in a separate room. She still had to be near him, she still had to give him what he asked of her, but she at least didn’t have to feel his breath on her neck each night. A few hours of peace and the logic that he couldn’t kill her yet, that’s all that kept Kelly sane.

With Lucifer’s tacit admission of his own guilt had come the end of civility, of Lucifer politely excusing himself from arguments with Michael or Raphael. Now, when Lucifer and Michael argued, the arguments turned to shouting and to Raphael and Kelly holding them back from each other. When Michael was gone, when Lucifer only had Raphael to argue with, they would escalate further. Lucifer would argue with Michael, sure, but he wouldn’t physically harm him. The two princes were evenly enough matched that physical fights would do them no good. But as Raphael had told Kelly, Lucifer had no qualms about hurting Raphael.

Kelly sat, frozen in her chair in the library, as Lucifer laid another kick to Raphael’s side. He had tackled her to the floor only a moment earlier, the exact argument that had caused their fight already forgotten in the chaos. As Kelly would soon learn, it did not matter what the excuse was for violence, only that it was enough to provoke Lucifer’s anger.

The thing that surprised Kelly most, given everything she knew about Raphael, was that she didn’t fight back. She didn’t lift a hand to stop Lucifer, or to hurt him in return. She just took it, not giving Lucifer a real fight. And perhaps it annoyed Lucifer, too, perhaps he was searching for a real fight instead of a punching bag, because whenever he was done with her, he would always say a variation of the same phrase.

“Pathetic,” he would murmur, “not even worthy of calling yourself an alpha, are you, Raphael?”

If there is one thing that will never fail to be miserable, it’s formal balls. Since Michael and Adam never had a formal wedding and Adam had finally finished the etiquette phase of his education, someone in the palace hierarchy (likely Rowena) had decided that it was a lovely occasion to invite half the nobility to celebrate the “newlywed” couple.

“I’m going to go get another drink,” Kelly tells Lucifer, with every intention of downing the first glass of champagne she finds on her way to find someone who actually wishes to talk with her.

“Don’t get into too much trouble,” Lucifer murmurs in response.

“I could say the same for you.”

Lucifer ticks. “Public spectacle isn’t my style, Kelly.”

“Too many witnesses?”

“Something like that.”

And with that end to the conversation, Kelly shrugs Lucifer’s hand off her waist and makes her way to the buffet tables at the edge of the room. Most of the guests are milling about, trying to track down whoever it is they wish to converse with and be seen by, so the buffet table is left something close to alone. Alone, that is, except for Adam, who is standing nearby with a small plate of pastries.

“Parties not really your thing?” Kelly asks, sidling up to him.

“Not particularly. The food’s good, though, so I suppose it’s not the worst thing that could happen.”

Kelly laughs. “I understand completely. I’m going to get some champagne, do you want some?”

“No, I’m good.” If Adam is trying to be subtle, he fails completely, but only because he looks down at his stomach as he says it.

“So,” Kelly says, like a bloodhound that’s just caught a whiff on the wind, “are you--”

Adam sighs. “You promise not to tell anyone?”

“Promise.”

Adam nods curtly, a little grin coming to his lips. “I’m not that far along, so we’re waiting to announce it, but. Yeah.”

“Congratulations!” Kelly would’ve given Adam a hug, but given that they’re trying to be noticed as little as possible in a ballroom with hundreds of nobles, it wouldn’t be the best idea.

“Thanks.”

And at that moment, one of Kelly’s only other friends who attend these types of parties comes over to them, two glasses of champagne in hand. “Hello, dear.”

Kelly leans in to let Balthazar kiss her on the cheek, happily taking one of the proffered glasses of champagne as he does. She turns to Adam, and quickly introduces them. “Adam, this is Balthazar Milton; Balthazar, this is Michael’s new husband, Adam.”

“A pleasure,” Balthazar says, holding out the other glass of champagne for Adam to take.

“I’m uh, not drinking tonight,” Adam says. “Thanks, though.”

“Well, another for me, then.” Balthazar looks Adam over as he takes a sip of the champagne. “You two got at it quite fast, then, I assume? Well, it’s not like you have time to waste, not in this economy.”

“We’re not--” Adam tries to stutter out, a blush already coming to his cheeks.

“No worries, dear, you don’t have to explain yourself to me.” Balthazar looks around the room before looking back to Adam. “Where are you from, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“He’s from the Winchester estate,” Kelly says.

“Ah. You know my little brother, then.”

“Your little brother?”

“Castiel,” Balthazar clarifies. Adam nods, and Balthazar continues. “It looks like none of the Winchesters have decided to attend, so unfortunately we’re all missing out on  _ that _ touching family reunion, but my sister and her wife are here, and they dragged my even littler brother along.”

“Where is Samandriel?” Kelly wonders, looking around the room.

“Over there with the most-eligible-omegas club, I think,” Balthazar says, turning and pointing to one corner of the room. There’s a table set out for people to sit down and eat as they wish, but the table is currently occupied by at least fifteen noble omegas, all of them in the suitable matchmaking age range of eighteen to twenty five. There are  _ not _ fifteen chairs, and some of them appear to have taken to sitting on each others’ laps, on the table, or on the ground surrounding the table. At the center of all this madness, in the seat with the back against the wall and thus likely the first person who had sat down, is Raphael.

Kelly can’t help but laugh at the sight. “They’re all going after Raphael, now?”

“Of course they are,” Balthazar says. “With Michael married, of course all the noble families are competing to be Raphael’s in-laws.”

“Why wouldn’t--” Adam swallows. “Like, I know Michael would never marry someone else, but why aren’t they competing to be Michael or Lucifer’s second spouse, instead of Raphael’s first?”

“Well,” Balthazar says, “first off, second spouses and their families don’t get nearly the favor first spouses do, unless the second marriage had been planned farther in advance. Second, most nobles are well aware of Michael and Lucifer’s negative feelings toward plural marriage. And third, many--not all--noble omega girls prefer alpha women to alpha men. Something about feminine mystical energy, or some such nonsense.”

“Your little brother’s over there, though?”

“He is,” Balthazar replies, “but if I had to guess…” He squints over at the group, clearly trying to pick out the details. “Yup, the only boy. My sister insisted he attempt to catch Raphael’s attention, but I doubt he’s making much of an effort.”

Kelly looks over at the omegas. She doesn’t know all of them, but she spots Jo Harvelle, one of the Winchesters’ cousins, as well as Hannah, Naomi’s little sister. Little being a relative term, as Hannah is one of the oldest omegas among the group. “Is Naomi trying to push her sister on Raphael as well?”

“Hannah?” Balthazar looks over. “I thought she liked other omegas. Practically threw herself at Castiel, before he married Dean.”

“Maybe a lavender marriage, then?”

Balthazar raises an eyebrow. “You think Raphael likes alphas?”

“I know she likes at least one.” Kelly’s not usually one to give away secrets, but Balthazar is surprisingly good at keeping information quiet for someone who enjoys gossip as much as he does. As long as Kelly doesn’t give any details, it’ll probably be fine.

Balthazar hums. “And here I thought she didn’t like anyone.”

“Um, what’s a lavender marriage?” Adam asks.

Balthazar looks at him for a long moment, and Kelly suspects that Balthazar had momentarily forgotten that Adam was not accustomed to the language that nobles used to describe their social affairs. “Well,” Kelly says, “it’s when an alpha who likes alphas and an omega who likes omegas marry each other, so that they can get the benefits of being married while also having their own fun on the side.”

“That’s-- There are alphas who like alphas?” Adam doesn’t seem like he’s opposed to the idea, more just confused by it.

“Plenty,” Balthazar says. “Sexuality is messy, and people like who they like. You lived with Gabriel, I’m sure you know that he’s interested in just about anyone who’s an adult and willing?”

Kelly snorts. “As if that description doesn’t  _ also _ apply to you, Balth.”

“I never claimed it didn’t. But I’m also unfortunately stuck being a beta, and therefore my exploits do not get discussed nearly as widely as those of our dear omega prince.” 

“Perhaps you should be thankful for that.”

“I would be,” Balthazar says, “if I wasn’t friends with Gabriel. Unfortunately, I am, and that means that I have to hear entirely too many details of his sex life.” He takes a long sip of his champagne. “Do you know how he and Sam avoid having children?”

Kelly suspects the same way she’s avoiding children, but she imagines Balthazar has been told something very different, if he thinks it’s worth gossiping about. “Do I want to know?”

“Probably not. But I’m going to tell you anyway.” He turns to Adam. “Cover your ears, if you’re not interested in hearing about sex.”

“I’m an adult,” Adam replies blithely.

“Not my fault, then.” Balthazar looks back to Kelly. “Gabriel tops.”

Well, then. “Somehow, I’m honestly not surprised,” Kelly says. “But I also wish you hadn’t told me.”

“And I wish he hadn’t told me, but here we are.”

Kelly sighs. “Have you ever considered simply spending less time with Gabriel?”

“I’ve considered it, all right, and then I realized I’d be leaving him to the Winchesters, and I’m too good of a friend to do that.”

Adam clears his throat. “So, um, to return to all of the omegas trying to marry Raphael.”

“Yes?”

“Is that, like, normal? For all of these noble families to push their omega kids on someone, even if the kids themselves aren’t interested?”

“Very normal,” Kelly says. “My own family weren’t as blunt going about it as most of these families are, but it’s a normal practice. All of the nobles want a royal in-law, and this is the quickest way to have a shot at getting one.”

“So they’re just...attending for the express purpose of trying to marry Raphael?”

Balthazar nods. “There’s only three reasons anyone attends a ball like this: one, they’re trying to court someone,” he gestures to the omegas, “two, they’re trying to be seen,” he gestures to Adam, “or three, they’re here to make fun of the first two groups.” He gestures to himself and Kelly.

“You assume I want to be seen,” Adam says.

“I never said  _ you _ want to be seen. But your husband certainly wishes for you to be seen, I’d imagine.” Balthazar looks around the room. “Where is Michael, anyway?”

Adam points across the room, rolling his eyes. “He’s been stuck in a conversation with his dad for the past hour.”

“Well. That’s unfortunate for him, isn’t it?”


End file.
